While Liverpool’s penalty shootout victory over Derby County to reach the League Cup fourth round might not have been a game to remember footballing purists, it was still a memorable night that a number of Jurgen Klopp’s squad will never forget.
Layton Stewart and Ben Doak were both handed their Reds debuts, while Calvin Ramsay, Stefan Bajcetic, Bobby Clark and Melkamu Frauendorf were all handed their first starts for the club as Liverpool maintained their recent tradition of using the League Cup to blood their youngsters.
Wednesday’s victory over the Rams means 34 academy graduates have now made their Reds debut or maiden start for the club in the League Cup since Klopp took over as Liverpool manager in October 2015. Meanwhile, a further 10 academy graduates have also been utilised across the German’s 25 League Cup matches to date.
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So spare a thought for Kaide Gordon as the 18-year-old missed out on the chance to face his former club because of injury. Joining Liverpool from Derby in a deal worth up to £3m back in February 2021, it was in the League Cup last season where he made his debut for the club against Norwich City the following September.
He’d even start the League Cup semi-final second leg against Arsenal back in January, with Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane away at the Africa Cup of Nations. Yet he hasn’t featured for the first team since because of a pelvic injury linked to his physical growth, with his last appearance for the club at any level being a Premier League 2 appearance against Leeds United back in February.
If fit then the winger would have surely have at least been on the bench against his former employers, while he’ll have been well-placed to add his four senior appearances this season given the Reds’ frequent injury woes. Even if he’d have stayed at Derby rather than moved to Anfield, he’d have probably started the game too, having already made his senior debut for the East Midlands club. It should have been his night to remember also.
Liverpool, having no desire to rush the youngster back before he’d ready, have been keeping a careful eye on the teenager, with him following his own specialised training programme. With the Under-21s now not in action until 2023, a competitive playing return appears to be on hold until the new year, though it remains to be seen if he’ll be fit to take part in the Reds’ mid-season training camp in Dubai.
“Kaide ’s been unfortunate with a long-term injury,” Under-21s head coach Barry Lewtas told the ECHO last month. “He’s another unbelievably young boy. He’s still an Under-18 which is crazy.
“You have to be careful with certain injuries because there is a long-term plan there as well. He’s still here. He’s still smiling in the corridors. I still love bumping into Kaide because he’s a good kid.
“He’s been out for a bit, it’s just small steps with him at the minute. One beauty for us is the World Cup being at an unusual time. Our season stops on November 9th and we don’t restart until January. Hopefully it may give the lads who we’ve got injured, like Kaide, the opportunity to work their way back.”
The gem of the Liverpool academy this time last year, following in Harvey Elliott ’s footsteps, that crown has now been claimed by Doak following his sensational start to his Reds youth career after joining from Celtic in the summer. When you throw in the likes of Frauendorf, Mateusz Musialowski and Trent Kone-Doherty, it’s clear Liverpool have developed something of a niche for discovering some of the best young wide men around in recent seasons.
As a result, Gordon, who only turned 18 last month, faces competition to stake his claim once more when fit with the secret very much out regarding the likes of Doak following his own eye-catching debut. Now, he is just one of a number looking to follow in Elliott’s footsteps and become a first team regular.
Missing Wednesday night’s game against his former employers and some familiar faces will have stung Gordon more than any other, with his time on the sidelines now extending to nine months. But what are these months on the sidelines if he can force his way into the Liverpool first team in the years ahead, with Elliott setting the perfect example after a dislocated ankle derailed his season last year.
And this fresh competition ultimately provides the perfect preparation for the likes of Gordon, given that his favoured position is a certain right wing role currently occupied in Klopp’s side by Mohamed Salah. Now 30, the Egyptian signed a new contract until at least 2025 in the summer, but won’t be around forever.
While there will inevitably be a clamour for a big-money replacement when the time comes for the Reds to find a successor to their Egyptian King, deep down club bosses will perhaps hope that his would-be replacement proves to be a player already on the club books.
If that did prove to be the case, the contenders are stacking up, with assistant manager Pep Lijnders stressing the importance of balancing new signings with blooding talented youngsters only earlier this week.
"If you buy a lot of players, young players don’t get a chance. One influences the other," the Dutchman said. "It’s also the type of player you want to buy. I think we invested well…
"We cannot afford to buy and not be right. We can only afford to buy to be right. And it has to add something to our team. Something special, something new… We have to be right and that’s what we search for…
"Do people want to see one or two or three or four more players? Of course! Everybody wants to see, the outside world. We prefer to have the right one, and to really work with. And give time for young ones, to really work with.
"Add and renew the team, make it younger, add the academy. Give talent a chance and to buy the top one who influences the first XI immediately like Luis, like Jota, like Ibou, like Kostas.
"I think we invested. What people will want to see is transfers is the one thing. Building a club and building a long-term successful relationship has much more to do than just the transfers."
Gordon will long to be one of the players who can benefit from such a club philosophy in the years ahead, having caught Lijnders’ eye in the summer of 2021 to earn his initial first team promotion in the first place.
“About Kaide, before pre-season we always make sure that our biggest talents start a week earlier than we start,” the Dutchman told reporters ahead of what would be the winger’s debut against Norwich. “They start with the Under-23s training and I went to the U23s training ground to watch and I see one player and he has fire in each moment he touched the ball.
“He passes players like they are not standing there so I call Jurgen like, ‘Wow, we have a new player here.’ We take all these young players to pre-season and you know you have a good player around you is when the senior players start taking care of this young player.
“When you see James Milner speaking with Kaide. When you see Trent becoming a proper mentor. When you see them invite him to sit on the table. All our boys in our group invited him and it made it, not easier, but good for him to adapt to our team and to our style.
“What you see a lot with these kind of wingers, they can now play, they can combine. He has a goal in him and he has this natural ability to be in the box between the goalposts to score, even when the cross comes from the other side, and not many talents have that.
“They have maybe dribbling skills but they don’t have this desire to shoot and come in the box to score. He is a typical Liverpool Football Club winger in my opinion because he has goals, he has speed. We really like him and we’re really happy he’s with us.”
2022 was supposed to be Gordon’s year, with the former Derby man starting it by scoring his first Liverpool goal against Shrewsbury, making his Premier League debut as a substitute against Brentford and then starting the League Cup semi-final against Arsenal. Such feats all came in January before his untimely injury.
Now no longer the only young winger to set such tongues wagging at the academy, he’ll have lost time to make up for when he returns to fitness with an added point to prove at Anfield in 2023.
Liverpool fans can be forgiven for forgetting about Gordon, but nobody at the club will be overlooking his talent.
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