Jurgen Klopp praised his team’s approach to their task after Liverpool recorded a 6-1 win over Sparta Prague in the Europa League.

Holding a 5-1 aggregate lead from the first leg in Czechia, the Reds ensured their name will be in Friday’s quarter-final draw with an emphatic victory at Anfield.

Darwin Nunez, Bobby Clark, Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo all struck within the opening 14 minutes on Thursday night, and Dominik Szoboszlai and Gakpo again glossed the score in the second half.

“We spoke about that obviously today in the team meeting and I said, I don’t expect us to lose 5-0 and you get knocked out but it’s a sold-out stadium, everything is prepared for a really good football game. We decide if we get through somehow or if we play a really good game, and there are so many reasons why we should try to play a really good game,” said Klopp.

“And then the boys started the game incredibly well. We were really, really after them, at them – however you want to call it – and scored wonderful goals. 4-0 after 14 minutes is really strange, and from that moment on it became a strange game because how can you now stay greedy and these kind of things? In that moment probably everybody thought, ‘OK, we have other games to come’, stuff like this. We tried as well at half-time, changing early. Robbo [Andy Robertson] on centre-half, Joey [Gomez] precaution, Darwin precaution.

“None of them was necessary to take off, it’s just obviously Sunday is another game so that’s the moment when we started thinking it as well. So when we start thinking like that, the boys think like that as well.”