The Argentinian kickstarted the Reds’ comeback from 2-0 down in Tuesday night’s Champions League tie with the La Liga club.

Arriving at the near post to meet Kostas Tsimikas’ corner kick, Mac Allister glanced in a clinical header to halve the deficit at Anfield.

Andoni Iraola’s team powered on from there and ultimately won 4-3, with Mac Allister supplying their third via a close-range blast from Rio Ngumoha’s assist.

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Extended highlights: Liverpool 4-3 Villarreal

“As you can see, I’m not tall! But I love going into the box,” the No.10 told Amazon Prime during a post-match interview.

“I really like it. The set-piece coaches as well know I like to attack the near post. I scored in the World Cup as well. That’s a place that I like to get and it was a good header.

“The second goal, amazing from Rio again. I always speak with him about crossing the ball on the floor sometimes, like a cutback. And today he did it, he did really well.”

Ronald Araujo netted between Mac Allister’s strikes and Florian Wirtz slotted in what proved to be the separating goal during the second half.

Mac Allister explained the adjustments deployed by Andoni Iraola to help Liverpool stabilise and then dominate after falling behind.

“Already I would say 30, 35 minutes into the first half we made some changes,” said the midfielder.

“Trey [Nyoni] was a little bit deeper and I dropped to the middle to make a three-plus-one to keep more possession, because we were in a rush and we were not playing well.

“I think the last 10, 15 minutes of the first half was much better already and then second half we scored the goals, which is important.

“At the beginning the idea was maybe to play a little bit more on the right, open up a little bit more and play with Rio. We did it a couple of times quite well but we were not dominating the game and at the end, what you want when you are losing is to dominate the game and create chances.

“After that, thanks to the manager, we changed and we did well.”

The victory over Villarreal maintained the Reds’ 100 per cent record in the Champions League league phase with three wins.

Overall, head coach Iraola has presided over seven successes and just one defeat in his first 11 games since taking charge.

Mac Allister added: “From the first day that we started working together I saw something really important. He’s a nice guy, the coaching staff as well. It’s good.

“I think we are going in the right direction, but if you look at the game today it was far from perfect. So we need to work, we need to keep putting everything in.

“It’s a really important year for us so hopefully we can win some trophies.”