Jurgen Klopp hailed Dean Smith’s impact at Norwich City and urged them to hold their nerve in the scrap for Premier League survival after Liverpool emerged unscathed in a 3-1 Premier League win.

Klopp was indebted to the predatory instincts of Sadio Mane and Mo Salah yet again to cancel out Milot Rashica’s second half opener in a hard fought afternoon at Anfield.

The German admitted afterwards City’s bullish display caught him by surprise - but he is a fan of Smith’s work at Carrow Road.

“It is a really good football team. Dean is obviously doing an incredible job – very talented, very brave, very confident and all these kind of things, in the situation they are, really good,” he said.

“You make an analysis of an opponent and of course you use as well the last game they played and some other games, and you see some things which you want to use and then during the game you realise they analysed their own game as well and changed that completely. Then you have to find other ways, that’s how it is.

“Then, you don’t score, they find a little better in the game; they were actually always good, to be honest.

“But half-time, it was not that we said we had to change this, this and this. Actually, we showed one longer sequence where we played exactly like we should have played all the time. We just should have done it more often. We tried that in the second half obviously but then we concede that goal and you could see directly a few minutes after, it was now a bit hectic, the atmosphere was hectic, everyone got a bit nervous.

“Our first goal obviously was not the biggest chance we had in the game, Sadio just scored off it with an incredible finish. And the other goals were really beautiful as well. Yes, it was complicated, no problem with that. It’s Premier League, you can see what kind of quality all the teams have. But that makes it so special when you win them then anyway.”