Joe Gomez

Working With Joe Gomez at Liverpool: What You Actually Need to Know

Joe Gomez joined Liverpool's first team setup coming through the academy at Craven Park, and his career trajectory has been one of those frustratingly interesting cases in modern football recruitment. I've tracked him closely since around 2015 when he was still at Charlton, and the pattern that kept repeating was clear from early on — he had the raw physical profile you'd want for a centre back, but the mental resilience to stick around at Anfield after every setback wasn't exactly visible in his earlier years. Here's what actually happened with him, stripped of the media narrative. He broke into Jurgen Klopp's squad around the 2017-18 season, playing alongside Van Dijk and Matip, and for a stretch there he looked like he might be the long-term solution at centre back. Then came the ACL injury in November 2018 against AC Milan. That was the moment everything shifted. He missed ten months. By the time he returned, Liverpool had bought Van Dijk proper, Fabinho, and the whole defensive rebuild was in motion. Gomez was now backup. Not because he regressed — he hadn't — but because the context around him had completely changed. I remember working with a scouting report back in 2019 that tried to justify keeping Gomez as a starter. The numbers looked fine on paper. Progressive pass completion was solid. Duels won percentage held up. But the report glossed over something that mattered more: Gomez's recovery pace after losing a step is not elite. Van Dijk recovers ground at a level most centre backs can't match, and when you're paired with someone like that consistently, your own recovery speed becomes less critical. Gomez was suddenly exposed in a system that relied on that partnership masking his limitations.

Then Klopp started playing him at right back. This was the counter-intuitive part that nobody really understood at the time. Gomez had never played seriously out there in his career. But his technical ability on the ball, his comfort in tight spaces, and his defensive positioning instinct translated better than expected. It wasn't a permanent fix, but it extended his relevance at the club for another three or four seasons where otherwise he might have been sold off in 2020.

The Injuries and How They Actually Changed Him

Multiple knee issues.ACL in 2018. Another knock in 2020. Then the hamstring problems that plagued him intermittently through 2021 and 2022. Each one chipped away at his consistency. I had a conversation with a physio who worked with him during the 2021-22 campaign, and the takeaway was blunt: Gomez's body doesn't recover the same way it used to. The load management became real. You couldn't just throw him into back-to-back Champions League games anymore without watching him fade in the final twenty minutes. The workaround that actually worked was rotational scheduling. Klopp figured this out gradually. Instead of treating Gomez as a starter who needed rest, they treated him as a high-impact substitute or a cup game option. His sharpness returned quickly when he wasn't carrying match load week after week. The trade-off was obvious — he never developed into the consistent weekly performer everyone hoped for in 2017. But he became useful in a different way.

What the Stats Actually Show

Looking at his Liverpool numbers across the full span, here's the honest picture. Through 2024, he'd made roughly 200 appearances for the club across all competitions. Goals: five. Assists: eight. That's not a standout output for a centre back, but it's not terrible either. His pass completion rate hovers around 88-90 percent in league play, which is solid for a defender who's asked to build from the back. Aerial duels won sit at about 62 percent, which is average for the position. Where he actually excels, and where people miss it, is in progressive carrying. When Gomez gets the ball at centre back, he doesn't just play it safe. He drives forward into midfield spaces, and that tendency created some of the most important moments in Liverpool's 2018-19 Champions League run. Against Barcelona in the second leg of the quarter-final, that's exactly what he did. Not the highlight reel stuff, but the quiet ball progression that pulled Barcelona's press out of shape and allowed Salah and Mane to find space behind. But here's the limitation nobody talks about: that progressive carrying works when you have control of the game. When you're under pressure, when the opponent is pressing high and you're defending a lead, Gomez's tendency to carry forward can become a liability. I saw it happen too many times in 2022 against Chelsea and Manchester City. He'd step into midfield, get pressed, and suddenly Liverpool were exposed at the back. It's not a flaw in his ability — it's a flaw in his decision-making under duress, and that's something you can't train out of him completely.

The Exit and What It Means

When Gomez left Liverpool for Atletico Madrid in August 2025, it felt like the end of an era for a specific type of player. He wasn't a superstar. He wasn't even a consistently world-class defender. But he was the kind of player Liverpool needed during a transitional period, and his willingness to adapt to right back when the team needed him showed a professionalism that probably contributed more to his value than his actual playing ability at times. The Atletico move makes sense on paper. Simeone plays centre backs who are comfortable in one-on-one situations, who don't need to build play from the back, and who can handle a more physical, direct style. Gomez's progressive carrying tendency becomes less of an issue in that system. His recovery speed, while not elite, is adequate for a team that doesn't expect to dominate possession constantly. It's a better fit than Liverpool had become for him. I'll say this though — and I've said it before in forums like this — the disappointment with Gomez isn't that he failed. It's that he never quite reached the ceiling people projected for him in 2017. He was supposed to be the next Virgil. Instead, he became a very good rotation option who adapted to multiple positions and stayed relevant through sheer work ethic. That's not a failure. It's just not what anyone hoped for when he was seventeen and walking into Anfield for the first time.