Robins: Friendly encounter was a huge learning curve

MARK Robins is sure that Stoke City will be able to learn a few things from their brush with a team 'from another planet' when they took on Liverpool in a behind-closed-doors friendly.

- Peter Smith

Stoke might not have been too sure what to expect from a Liverpool squad that was flying out to Asia for a preseason tour on Sunday evening - but they got the Premier League champions at pretty much full capacity, with a starting XI including Mo Salah, Virgil van Dijk and mega money new signing Florian Wirtz.

Liverpool stormed into a 4-0 lead inside the opening 20 minutes without Stoke even playing all that poorly, showing a ruthless streak as Darwin Nunez scoring a hat-trick and Rio Ngumoha finding the net. Federico Chiesa also scored in what turned out to be a 5-0 home win at the Axa training ground.