???️ Is Joe Gomez The Answer To Liverpool???s Centre Back Problem?

It’s been quite a week for Joe Gomez , after an impressive full international debut on Friday night against Germany the Liverpool full-back caped a fine first start for England last night with a man of the match performance as he earns a lot of plaudits along the way, what was even more impressive was in both matches Gomez played at centre-back and this led to me asking the question last night have Liverpool got the answer to their centre-back problem right in front of them? It’s easy to forget that Gomez is actually a centre-back by trade, Liverpool fans have been used to seeing him on the right and the left but very rarely at the heart of the defence, however from what I saw last night maybe it’s something that Klopp need to seriously consider moving forwards. Gomez played 155 minutes against two of the best teams in the world this week at centre-back and arguably didn’t put a foot wrong in both games, he was very impressive on Friday night against Germany but last night he was absolutely brilliant. Gomez made Neymar look average last night, yes “the Neymar” and that takes some doing, the Englishmen had the Brazilian forward in his back pocket for the entire game, he didn’t let Neymar out of his site. If Neymar dropped deep Gomez went with him, if he cut in Gomez did the same, if he went out wide Gomez was there. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Gomez went home with Neymar and tucked him into bed as he literally did not give him any space at all last night. We are talking about one of, if not the best players in the world at the minute and Joe Gomez kept him quiet for 90 minutes , in my eyes that’s impressive. I said before that I think out of all our defenders Gomez is the best option when it comes to playing at centre-back, I know he has been used there twice this season, away at Leicester in the Carabao Cup and at Wembley against Tottenham, and on both occasions the result didn’t go our way, however I don’t think this had anything to do with Gomez playing in the middle, from what I saw he looked accomplished and settled into the role naturally. So is this the way moving forward???s? We have to take a couple of things into account before we jump on the bandwagon. Firstly as amazing as Gomez was last night, England played a very defensive set up against Brazil and this is important because if Klopp does decide to play him at centre-back he won’t have as much protection in front of him as he did last night. The England midfield played very deep in an effort to close the space between them in the defence, Liverpool do not play like this, Klopp likes to push his midfield forward and as we don’t have an out and out holding player Gomez is likely to be more exposed if he was to play that position for Liverpool. Secondly we have to take into account is that if Klopp was to play Gomez at centre-back it would mean Trent Alexander Arnold would have to play every game at right-back until Nathanial Clyne was fit  again. Clyne is likely to be out until the end of the year and probably won’t regain full match fitness until February so this could mean a lot of games for young Trent to play and I think Klopp is wary of putting so many games onto his young shoulders. The other solution to this is to bring Jon Flanagan back into the fold and rotate between Trent and him for that right-back position, this in turn would free up Gomez to play at centre-back. The problem is I don’t think Klopp trust Flanagan enough to play him at right-back regularly and unless he can rediscover his form from the 2013/14 season Klopp  isn’t going to change his mind. So where does this leave Gomez? Unfortunately for now I think he’s going to have to rotate with Trent for that right-back position because of the reasons I have already spoken about, however once Clyne is fit again I honestly think Joe Gomez is a big piece in the puzzle for solving our centre-back problem.   Article by Imraan Adam @imadam786