Caoimhe O’Neill has been speaking on the latest edition of The Athletic’s The Red Agenda about all things relating to Liverpool.
One of the topics that she talked about was the injury Joe Gomez suffered while away with England.
O’Neill provided an update on the 23-year-old, and it doesn’t look good for Gomez or Liverpool, with the defender, who is valued at £36 million (as per Transfermarkt), likely to miss most of the season.
She said: “They haven’t put a timeframe on it, but they haven’t ruled him out of the season, but that’s the same [with] what they’ve done with [Virgil] van Dijk, it points to the fact that he maybe won’t play this season, but there’s maybe a slim chance that he will.
“Such a devastating blow at the minute, Liverpool fans just must be thinking, ‘what the hell is going on?'”
Will Liverpool miss Gomez?
Yes, we could really struggle
No, we will be fine
TIF Thoughts on Gomez and O’Neill’s view on the situation…
Liverpool have also potentially lost Virgil van Dijk for the season, so to lose Gomez for the remainder of the campaign as well is a huge blow for the Reds.
This is because Jurgen Klopp’s side are now left with just Joel Matip, Sepp van den Berg, Nathaniel Phillips and Rhys Williams as natural centre-backs.
Fabinho has played as a stand-in centre-back this season, so he is also an option, but as it stands, there are only four natural centre-back options (Williams, Matip, Van den Berg, and Phillips), and only Matip has played over five games for Liverpool’s first team.
So, you can see the problems that the Reds might face, and though they haven’t officially ruled Gomez out for the season, judging by O’Neill’s words, it doesn’t sound too good for the Liverpool man.
We are unsure how Liverpool will cope without Gomez or Van Dijk for most of the season, but considering Williams and Matip are the only two of the four alternative centre-back options to have played more than one first-team game this season, they could struggle.
In our view, the upcoming game against Leicester City is sure to be a test for whatever centre-back pairing Klopp picks, as the Foxes are currently top of the league and have already beaten Manchester City and Arsenal this season.