Liverpool journalist Ian Doyle has been discussing the Reds’ defensive duo of Virgil van Dijk and Joe Gomez and the current injury issues the pair have.
This comes after Doyle recently made an appearance on the Liverpool Echo’s Blood Red Podcast where he spoke about a number of topics concerning the Merseyside club.
On the topic of Gomez and Van Dijk’s injuries, Doyle had this to say on the matter.
He said: “How close is Van Dijk to coming back? You know, we saw him training out in Dubai the other week, I think we were all taken aback at the amount of work that he was doing.
“It’s interesting – you compare that to Joe Gomez, who we’ve not seen sight nor sound of since he got his injury, which I suspect may not be a particularly great sign.
“I’ll be amazed if we see him again this season.”
Van Dijk suffered a knee injury back in October that required surgery to fix his ligaments, but as Doyle mentioned in the podcast, the Dutchman recently uploaded a video of himself working hard to recover from this injury.
In November, Liverpool revealed that Gomez, who is currently valued at £36 million, had undergone surgery to repair a tendon in his knee after he picked up an injury while away on international duty.
The Merseyside club said that no timescale “is being placed upon his return, though the issue is likely to rule him out for a significant part of the remainder” of the 2020/21 season.
Has Joe Gomez been a big miss for Liverpool?
Yes
No
TIF Thoughts on Ian Doyle’s comments on Gomez…
While it’s undoubtedly a huge shame that Gomez could well miss the rest of the season because of this injury, given how he had only managed to earn himself a disappointing season rating of 6.48/10 for his performances in the league before picking up this injury, maybe he hasn’t been a huge miss for the Reds.
Also, with Liverpool conceding a total of 16 goals in the league games that Gomez has played in so far this season and have now only conceded four since he got this injury, it appears that their defence seems to have improved in the defender’s absence (per Transfermarkt).
In our view, while these statistics may suggest that Liverpool have been better off without Gomez in the side, Jurgen Klopp would still rather have the defender fit and available to play.