You can see from the graphic above that a passing percentage of 90% and 92% is brilliant and if you notice during the warm ups now , they both practice pinging the ball across the pitch to each other and you can see that it comes in handy during the game as neither of them are afraid to pick out a long ball, especially Van Dijk who had 10 successful long balls on Monday night, and majority of the time it ends up working in our favour.
If I was to describe Joe Gomez performance in one word on Monday it would be solid. He was error-free during the game which doesn’t always happen for him and he was never really caught out by the attackers. Coming up against Jeffrey Schlupp, Wilfried Zaha and Andros Townsend is never easy but he wasn’t out of his depth and dealt well with all three of them.
Then Van Dijk performance was top draw, in my Things We Learned article after the game I described him as a man mountain and that is exactly what he is. It was like no attacker could get past him, he was dominant and out muscled everyone for a header and it was that determination that helped us score the second goal. We saw it multiple times last season and from the very first game against Everton he changed our team completely.
I think the presence of Alisson behind them is also what makes them feel comfortable, they experienced that with Karius in a couple of games last season but Alisson is a step up and to have a goalkeeper like him who you know will put on a good display definitely takes the pressure off of them.
I think we have really hit the nail on the head with our defensive line-up at the minute and I wouldn’t be surprised to see these players feature in majority of our games this season. Obviously once Lovren is back there is the debate about whether or not Gomez should be dropped but if he continues to play the way he is then I don’t see any reason to. You’ve got to put your strongest eleven out every week and I think this is it.
I know we are only two games into the season and we’ve got a long way to go but this partnership has been developing for a while now and you know what you are getting with these two. Gomez has struggled with injuries but I feel like this is the position he really shines in and there is no point in playing him there for a couple of games and then dropping him for Lovren as soon as he is back fit, you’ve got to give him a chance to prove himself and so far he has done that.
Let me know if you think Gomez should keep his place at centre-back or Lovren should return?
Article by Lauren Black -@Lauren_Black9
