Cody Gakpo got his first Liverpool goal against Everton but there were other aspects of his performance which may have pleased Jürgen Klopp even more.
It always seems surprising how quickly things can turn in football, but sometimes all you need to do is play a team as bad as Everton. Perhaps that’s a little unfair on the Blues; Liverpool has rarely won at Goodison Park under Jürgen Klopp, after all.
But when a team arrives at Anfield with three away wins since the start of last season, never mind this, you can be confident of getting a result, derby or no derby. And so it proved last Monday with the Reds beating Everton 2-0.
It wasn’t only Liverpool’s form in terms of results which turned for the better either. A weakness Klopp publicly identified last month appears to have been rectified, with a new player making a key contribution in two important ways.
The way his side had been playing in 2023, there was probably a post-match quote from Klopp for each match which highlighted one serious issue or other. However, when he spoke after the 2-2 FA Cup draw with Wolverhampton Wanderers, his comments were backed up by the data.
“In the whole game we didn’t win enough challenges, to be honest,” Klopp said (via the ECHO). “They win a challenge and all of a sudden we are completely open, how is that possible?”
How indeed, Jürgen? Whatever the reason, Liverpool only won 43.2 per cent of the duels that night, which was its sixth-worst performance of the campaign in this respect. Arguably of greater concern was that the Reds had edged the challenges by one in the first half but utterly disintegrated after the break.
They also dipped in the second half against Everton last time out, except that they did so from a position of such strength that they remained dominant, nonetheless. Liverpool won 57.1 per cent of the duels in the derby, its top league showing of 2022/23, its best figures in any competition against a club not from Glasgow and higher than its average in any previous Klopp season.
One of the key players was Cody Gakpo. Per Fotmob, the Dutchman was successful with seven of his 11 ground duels, with his 63 per cent win rate the best of any player who attempted more than three. Excelling in challenges on the deck appears to be a strength of the 23-year-old, even if we must acknowledge that his Reds career only represents a small sample to date.
