James Milner: We went up a level in beating Bologna

The No.7 captained the Reds to a comfortable 2-0 win in the opening 60-minute match in Evian, with Diogo Jota and Sadio Mane getting on the scoresheet.

Highlights: The best of both games v Bologna

Speaking to Liverpoolfc.com post-match, Milner said: “I thought it was mostly pretty good. Obviously you can tell it’s still pre-season but I thought we’ve gone up another level again in terms of the way we worked. 

“We worked on the pressing, how we wanted to do it, yesterday in training and both goals I think came from that so that shows that the work we’re doing is paying off. 

“I thought we looked mostly organised the majority of the time... I thought it was a good step up and closer to where we want to be.”

Read on for the rest of our interview with Milner…

On how satisfying the goals were…

I think it’s pleasing to get the goals but also it highlights some of the other situations that not only we’ve had this pre-season, but maybe last season where we’ve been in good situations on the break and not picked the right last pass or finished off the situation. So that’s something again that we can improve. If we can improve our ratio of finishing off those situations there will be a lot more goals there. But I thought it was a pretty good performance.

On whether the squad are close to where they want to be as the season draws closer…

Closer I think. Obviously it’s never easy in pre-season with players coming in at different times, different levels of fitness and not too many games before the first game of the season. I think the good thing about this group is that we’ve played together for quite a long time, so you fall back in pretty quickly and it’s just about getting the minutes in in pre-season. I think you can see from the performances each one is a step closer and we’re not coming into these games fresh. That’s the other thing: obviously in a season you are tapering training down into the game [but] we’ve had four very tough weeks here and we’re going into games with a big training load. So I think that’s pleasing and shows the fitness levels of the boys, that we can play with that intensity, but we’ve worked so hard over the four weeks. It’s been a really good camp. The training that we’ve done has really helped us work on the situations where we need to improve and hopefully make us better going into a new season.

On what Harvey Elliott has brought to the team during pre-season…

He’s a top player, I saw it the first time I trained with him. You could recognise how good he was, comfortable on the ball, good vision and a dribbler. It’s tough for him as well, coming back in after being away last season and getting back to how we play and it’s a different style to how most other teams play. I thought he’s had a good pre-season up to now and obviously the more minutes he gets in and around the boys in these games, the closer he will be.

On whether he gives Elliott advice having broken through at a young age himself…

Yeah, you try to. He’s a confident lad and he’s got a great mindset so he doesn’t need too much guidance, but hopefully we can help him on his way, all the boys. He’s a top talent and I see him making a big impact this year, but any help we can give him obviously helps him settle in and get up to speed. Maybe don’t make little mistakes that I made; if I can stop him doing that then with the talent he’s got he’s got a big future.

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