ReactionDiogo Jota on goals, belief and building on emphatic Leeds win

The Portugal international opened his account for a season that has been personally hindered by injuries with a pair of excellent finishes in the Premier League at Elland Road on Monday night.

Jota’s brace added to a Mohamed Salah double and efforts from Cody Gakpo and Darwin Nunez – and he is determined to maintain that individual and collective form.

Post-match, the No.20 spoke to Liverpoolfc.com about being back on the scoresheet, the performance against Leeds and the importance of building on it.

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Read the interview below…

On it being nice to be back among the goals…

Yeah, it was a great feeling. Obviously as a forward I want to score, not only assist, as I’ve been doing this season. And hopefully I can carry on this form from today.

On how it affects confidence during a spell without scoring…

Yeah, I think it was a bit of last season as well, I didn’t score in the last few games. This season is really, really hard, struggling with injuries. Now I’m trying to get that momentum and games like today will certainly help for that.

On getting the first goal giving him the belief to take his second in the way he did…

It’s part of football, you try to always believe in yourself but obviously when you do get the goal everything becomes easier in a player’s mind. So, we just need to take advantage of the moment because it’s really hard to achieve that.

On the competition for places in attack…

Yeah, we are Liverpool, we have great players. Like always, it’s a fight to be in the starting XI and if not, give your best when you come off the bench.

On the belief the players have that they can climb the table in the remaining weeks of the season…

We need to believe. While it’s possible, we need to believe. But we can only do that by winning games. Certainly, today was a step in the right direction.

On having to now ensure they maintain consistency…

I think this season we had great results, great wins and we didn’t really follow that. So hopefully this time we can go on a run and win pretty much all the games.

On Nottingham Forest being next up at Anfield on Saturday…

We know every game in the Premier League is hard but especially now in the final games; everyone is pushing for something and that’s even more competition. But we like that, we like to be in a good football game. So let’s hope we get the same result [a win].