Liverpool need Cody Gakpo to ideally hit the ground running and there’s stats which suggest having Andy Robertson at hand should help

Over the previous five seasons, Liverpool relied heavily on their full-backs for creativity, and they set up goals at a near identical rate from each flank. Between 2017/18 and 2021/22, Trent Alexander-Arnold collected 60 assists while Andy Robertson provided just eight fewer.

Yet this season, it has been no contest between the two. Alexander-Arnold finally earned his first assist of the campaign in Liverpool’s disappointing 3-1 defeat at Brentford, but his Scottish counterpart already has eight, at least two more than any other player in the squad.

Such things are somewhat random though, in that assists rely upon the player taking the shot converting the opportunity. Robertson has seen four of the seven clear-cut chances he has created become goals where Trent had none from eight before Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain headed in against the Bees.

Shortly before Christmas, Optajoe revealed the Liverpool full-backs’ importance extends beyond directly creating goals themselves. They shared a list of the five players with the most secondary assists in the last five Premier League seasons.

These are the passes which go to the player who then gets an actual assist directly afterwards. Robertson, with 21, was one ahead of Alexander-Arnold, though the latter will have drawn level thanks to enabling the former to create the opening goal at Aston Villa.

Add in the goals that they have directly assisted as well as scored and both players have directly contributed to over 70 league goals in less than four-and-a-half seasons. There will be plenty of traditional attackers who won’t have got close to those numbers.

If pushed to choose, there’s little doubt the majority of Liverpool supporters would say Alexander-Arnold is the more talented of the two. While that might be the case, he has also had a more settled situation, which will have given him a greater chance of performing well.

When the homegrown star established himself in the Reds’ first team, he had Jordan Henderson frequently starting in right midfield and Mohamed Salah as the forward on the same flank. Over five years later and that is largely the same, particularly in the case of the Egyptian.

Robertson has not been quite so fortunate. For his first four seasons, he was able to make triangles with Gini Wijnaldum and Sadio Mane, the trio linking superbly as Liverpool became champions of everywhere across 2019 and 2020. But the midfielder moved on at the conclusion of his contract at the end of 2020/21 with Mane following him out of the club 12 months later.

It is to Robertson’s credit that he has continued to be involved in near-enough as many goals as Alexander-Arnold, particularly with the upheaval which has occurred with Liverpool’s attack in the last year too. The Reds’ number 26 has already assisted goals for Luis Diaz, Roberto Firmino, Darwin Nunez and Salah this season, plus four for Diogo Jota in the previous two campaigns.

Robertson is also the only player who has assisted all eight men who have scored at least 20 non-penalty goals for Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool. With the side struggling for consistent form and Nunez on a small scoring drought, the left-back now has a new team-mate with whom he needs to integrate to help the team going forward.

If Cody Gakpo makes his debut against Wolves in the FA Cup this weekend, he may find Kostas Tsimikas behind him on the left-hand side of the team. Regardless of that, he will spend plenty of time with Robertson and they can link up as the Netherlands international did at times with left-back Philipp Max at PSV Eindhoven.

He assisted Gakpo for one of his three goals in a 7-1 win over FC Volendam in August. Three weeks later, Max provided the pre-assist which enabled the Liverpool new boy to tee up Jarrad Branthwaite for the opener in a 4-3 victory against Feyenoord. If Gakpo can swiftly strike up a similar relationship with Robertson, and the Scot’s history suggests he can, then it can only be good news for the Reds over the remainder of 2022/23 and beyond.

SOURCE: liverpoolecho.co.uk