Jurgen Klopp has confirmed Caoimhin Kelleher will start for Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final.
Kelleher made three appearances for Klopp’s side in the competition as they went on to set up a Wembley showdown against Chelsea on February 27.
The Republic of Ireland international’s shootout heroics helped the Reds ease past Leicester City in the quarter finals before seeing off Arsenal this week.
And Klopp insisted that Alisson’s understudy has earned himself a place in Liverpool’s starting XI for the meeting with Thomas Tuchel’s side next month.
He said: “Caoimhin will play if he’s fit.
“As a football manager you have to consider obviously a lot of things and one of the things is we consider Caoimhin as an outstanding goalie – not a good goalie, an outstanding goalie – and we want to keep him here.
“To keep him here, you need to make sure a few things, the different games he will get. Before the season, you think about it and talk about it.
“It’s all about performing, of course. If he wouldn’t have performed on the level he performed when he played then maybe I would have seen it different.
“But he shows he deserves all the trust and faith we have in him. That’s the situation.
“I didn’t think about it properly [yet] but my idea in this moment is that Caoimhin will play.
“Let’s see until then, but I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t do it, to be honest, because Caoimhin deserve that. He brought the team there [in the final].
“Last week against Arsenal, I had to explain to Caoimhin why he’s not playing.
“Usually I don’t do that but it was his competition and I thought Ali needs a game because of lacking rhythm after Covid and all these kind of things.
“What I really liked, Caoimhin was not like ‘Oh yeah, I understand’. He was like ‘What? Why?’ so he’s matured in all departments. That’s good and that’s exactly the goalie we want.
“It’s really a John Achterberg project because when I came here, there were not all the people in the club thinking ‘Caoimhin will be the next one’.
“There was one person and it was John, and here we go.
“He’s a goalie if you have to buy, that’s pretty expensive. We have now the best in the world and the really, really good one. That’s a good situation.”