Jürgen Klopp praised Liverpool's maturity and their defensive solidity as they defeat Southampton with a dominant and professional performance at Anfield.

Mohamed Salah's first-half brace, which makes him the club's most prolific goalscorer ever after 12 Premier League games now with nine goals, put the Reds in command against the Saints.

Philippe Coutinho finished off Mauricio Pellegrino's side with a side-footed finish with 20 minutes remaining as Liverpool secured their fourth successive win in all competitions, and in some style.

The display left their manager particularly pleased, but Klopp was mostly delighted by the way in which Liverpool denied the visitors any opportunities - Southampton failing to produce even a single shot on target with Simon Mignolet untested.

Reds boss pleased his side are in the top-four mix

"It's a good moment [for Salah]," he told his post-match press conference. "It's good for us.

"The first goal, the ball was already away and then we're fighting back somehow, I'm not sure how, maybe the mistake of Southampton but that's not a real chance from there, I would say. Then it's a fantastic goal.

"Second goal, fantastic play for the pass. I'm pretty sure Phil has played a few more of these passes in his life but when somebody gets it in the box and it's not offside, that's quite rare. Nice goal.

"Third one, we forced it. But let's start with Southampton, it was an open game in the beginning. We had chances and moments, the cross from Sadio [Mané], stuff like this.

"But Southampton are a really good football team to be honest and you need then these moments and we had these moments.

"We had them not too often this season these games like this, after 50-60 minutes, still 0-0. Stuff like this could be a similar performance or exactly the same performance as today.

"You need these goals and thank God in these moments we scored them. That makes all the difference.

"Of course, how you can imagine, I'm really happy with the defending of the whole team and especially the last line. It was really strong in these moments, counter-attacks and defending. Not only counter-attacks, just an all-round good performance.

"We really deserved it and for us, it's [a] very important that we push at the top of the table a little bit together. We are still in [the mix], that's good.

"[Manchester] City are obviously flying around pretty alone but we cannot change that. But we can make pressure on all the others and that's what we did today."

Maturity "very important" for Liverpool

The Reds boss felt his outfit produced a more polished performance and revealed that he had spoken to his charges about using the experience of their previous outings this term towards ensuring more control in matches.

"We spoke again about it after the two weeks now that we weren't together, that we have to build on our experience that we've made so far in the season," he continued.

"We've had pretty much everything, we've played all kinds of teams, all kinds of styles. There was only one game that was really bad and that was Tottenham. That was not good.

"I know the other results and maybe a few people will think a little bit differently, but in my eyes there was only one really bad game. The rest, we could have won all the other games. We have to score in the right moments and should not concede.

"But we speak only about the performance and we build on that now. This experience, we used it. We have much better [defensive] protection. I hope we can keep that, it's not that we wouldn't have known before but that's a big part of not getting nervous in a game.

"That's still a lesson for the whole of Liverpool. If we don't score, we have nothing else to do but try it again, try it again, try it again.

"We do that all the time. We can't play one pass after the other there, there, there behind the last line because that only means they have the ball much more often than they should have.

"The performance looked much more mature and that's very important for us."