Joe Gomez's Liverpool form has been Jurgen Klopp's 'life saver' for team this season - and not just at left-back
Jurgen Klopp praised impact of Joe Gomez on Liverpool's season following their semi-final success against Fulham in Carabao Cup. The defender has played a variety of subtly different roles to help sustain the team's momentum...
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Friday 26 January 2024 09:39, UK
“He is a life saver, to be honest,” said Jurgen Klopp inside a packed press room at Craven Cottage on Wednesday evening. “Without Joey, nothing would have happened in the last, pretty much 13 or 14 weeks since Robbo was out.”
Successful sides, title-winning teams, they require superstar players. But they also need others to step up over the course of long campaigns in multiple competitions. Joe Gomez has done that for Liverpool this season and Klopp understands the importance.
It is not just that Gomez has filled in at left-back during a period in which Andy Robertson and Kostas Tsimikas have been unavailable due to injury. The defender has prospered in the position that his Liverpool career began under Brendan Rodgers back in 2015.
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The first time this season that Klopp deployed Gomez there came at Luton in November. At the time, Tsimikas was available so it seemed to be a specific ploy to counter-act the obvious physicality of a team that crosses more than any other in the Premier League.
«I think it is a really sensible one given Luton's set-pieces,» Jamie Carragher told Sky Sports. «It also means Liverpool are basically set as a back three with Trent (Alexander-Arnold) cutting in. I think it makes a lot of sense.» But the ploy has evolved into something else.
At Fulham, there were times when he dropped in to play an inverted role that allowed Conor Bradley to advance on
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