Knowing When to Sell
The idea of selling Joe Gomez is a controversial one on Merseyside.
So whenever an international break comes around, journalists always tend to fall into the trap of writing relatively desperate pieces, purely as a means of getting some form of content out there.
There’s nothing to write about, so let’s throw [insert player or manager here] under the bus. There’s no domestic football for another fortnight, so let’s use a controversial subject to start a fire and see what happens.
I want to be clear, I’m not one of those guys. I’ll never write an unwarranted hit piece on a player because I’m out of ideas. But, we do encourage analysis on this Substack, which means not every post will be soaked in positivity.
This is a safe space for reasoned opinions. Praise is great, but keep your feet on the ground. Criticism is allowed, but it has to be fair.
So with those disclaimers in mind, this week’s Friday post is on Joe Gomez. If you listened to my opinions on various podcasts over the summer, you’ll know I was broadly in favour of selling the Liverpool defender.
Nothing against the player or the individual, I just thought the time was right, but plenty disagreed. The idea of selling him seemed to be alien for many supporters, mainly because the Englishman is part of the furniture nowadays.
Aside from some of the academy graduates at the club, Gomez is our longest-serving player. He’s also a pretty steady presence whenever he’s on the pitch, and he’s versatile, too. In fact, his new-found flexibility across different positions is one of the main reasons why so many supporters wanted to keep him.
I still like Gomez. He’s absolutely fine, And I’ve got no major problem whenever he’s involved, either. But there was definitely an argument for selling him, and with us now enduring the second international break of the campaign, he’s played a grand total of just two minutes in the Premier League so far.
Gomez is relatively good at most things. He’s got a nice feel for the ball, he’s decent when defending one-on-one situations, he’s a good size, he’s fast, and — as Jürgen Klopp once put it — he’s got muscles in all the right places.
You can play Gomez as a right-back, left-back or centre-back. And perhaps even as a holding midfielder based on his usage last season. He’s got Liverpool’s proactive game ingrained into his psyche, and he’s happy to drift under the radar as a functional team player who isn’t that fussed about grabbing the spotlight.
Moreover, Gomez is one of those classic managerial dreams, because he doesn’t expect to play all the time, but he’s still good. You’ll find a ton of those guys if you take a glance at the history of football. Darren Fletcher, Nacho, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Phil Neville, James Milner, Seydou Keita. The list is long.
And in addition to those perks, Gomez obviously has plenty of experience playing at the highest level in England and Europe. He’s been part of a winning culture for around a decade now.
I can see why people wanted to keep him, but that’s enough sunshine and rainbows for today. The case for selling him — and ideally upgrading — was probably stronger in my mind.
My perspective stems from more than just his age, now 27. When weighing up a player, my main thought always tends to revolve around how much the individual moves the needle for Liverpool, specifically within the context of winning matches and consequently accumulating points.
Let’s use Virgil van Dijk at the ultimate example. We all know he’s incredibly good, the best in the world. But William Saliba is also excellent. Who is better, what’s the difference? Well, the answer is Van Dijk, and it’s not even close.
For the sake of this argument, let’s say Saliba is as good as Van Dijk at one-on-one defending in open play. Cool, I’m still doubtful, but Arsenal fans can have that one. But outside of those scenarios, our man offers so much more value across multiple departments.
