Let’s be honest here, Joe Gomez was far from his best against Salzburg at Anfield on Wednesday night, but that won’t be news to him.
In truth, it was probably the worst possible game for the young defender to return to the first team in, but you can’t help it if Joel Matip gets injured.
In a game that finished 4-3, real end to end stuff, I can’t even imagine how Gomez coped as well as he did.
But you could tell he was nervous, and this is something that Virgil van Dijk seemed to have felt too as the Dutch international also had a sub-par game (by his standards).
For Gomez, this is simply rust. The lad hasn’t forgotten how to play football, he’s just been out of the picture for too long – and I’m not really including MK Dons in this as it’s a dramatic step up.
Statistics, whatever you think of them, suggests that the England centre half did have some positive aspects to his game against Salzburg.
Joe Gomez vs Salzburg
Most tackles won (6/6)
Most interceptions (4)
Wasn’t dribbled past
Made a last-man tackle pic.twitter.com/bRN7wPH2xW— LFC Stats (@LFCData) October 2, 2019
But the main point is that we shouldn’t obsess over a bad performance from Gomez – he will improved, and after all we did actually win the game in the end.