How can I assign a clone with a script to a variable? without drag & drop

At the start of my game, a player(clone) is instantiated with the PlayerStats script on it. When an Enemy dies, it calls the adjust methods in the PlayerStats script to increase the score and money variables. So I dragged and dropped the Player prefab into the playerStats slot in the Enemy prefab but this doesn’t adjust the values when I run the game. However, if I drag and drop the Player(Clone) to the playerStats slot on an Enemy(Clone) during run time then it works fine. But I obviously can’t drag and drop this on every single enemy during run time.

So how can I set that playerStats slot to be player(clone) in the code? I’ve searched around a lot and I can’t seem to find anything about this problem specifically.

public class Enemy : Entity {

	//how much score or money the player gets after kill
	public int scoreReward;
	public int moneyReward;
	public PlayerStats playerStats;
	public GameObject player;

	void start(){
		this.scoreReward = 10;
		this.moneyReward = 10;
		player = GameObject.FindWithTag("Player");
		//playerStats = player.GetComponent<PlayerStats>();
	}

    ...
	
	public void Die(){
		Destroy (this.gameObject);
		player.GetComponent<PlayerStats> ().AdjustScore (scoreReward);
		//playerStats.AdjustScore (scoreReward);
		//playerStats.AdjustMoney (moneyReward);
	}
}

change start() to Start()

remove the // from playerStats in Start()

in Die(),
move the Destroy to last

change player.GetComponent<PlayerStats>()

to

playerStats