Joe Gomez on Liverpool’s motivation and the need to “stay hungry”

Joe Gomez has admitted “it’s nice to be back” after the defender returned to pre-season training with Liverpool on Saturday.

The 22-year-old missed a large portion of last season with a serious leg injury after making a strong start alongside Virgil van Dijk in the heart of defence.

And the England international says he and the rest of the Liverpool squad are more determined than ever to win the Premier League title this season after narrowly missing out in the last campaign.

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“Obviously it is as intense as you’d expect when you first come back, a lot of running and dusting the cobwebs off,” Gomez told LiverpoolFC.com. “But it feels good, it’s nice to be back. It was nice to end on such a high last season and we just want to carry on where we left off and keep the momentum going.”

On tacking on the perpetually-fit James Milner in the lactate test at the weekend, Gomez added: “It’s probably as strenuous as it can get – it’s a maximal test, you go until you can’t go anymore.

“Everyone knows how fit Millie is, he’s a machine, but I tried to do as much as I could in the off-season to come back as fit as possible.

“It’s nice to be up there competing with him, to get to that stage, but Millie speaks for himself!”

The defender also spoke about the mood in the Liverpool camp after winning the Champions League but missing out on that long-awaited Premier League triumph.

“We can be happy and proud of the achievement but we’ve got so much more work to do and so many ways to improve as well,” Gomez said. “The Premier League was so close and I think that’s all the motivation we need, that we were so close but so far at the same time in the fact that we didn’t get it.

“It’s something we want to get this year and to do so we can’t get complacent or dwell on what happened last season, we have to hit the ground running again now.

“This is my fifth season now and I’ve had a lot of experience at the club and learned a lot here. But I’m still so young, I’ve got so much left to learn.

“I’ve got to keep developing, keep progressing and stay hungry.”

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Source: anfieldhq.com