Dutch international Cody Gakpo joined Liverpool in January 2023 from PSV Eindhoven. Last season, he often started as a centre-forward, but this season he has started more often from the middle of the field in the Premier League.
Compared to last season, he is used more often as a midfielder or left winger. Although he has scored double-digit goals in all competitions, he has not had the same impact as in his first year with the club.
Former Ireland midfielder Ray Houghton also compared him to his teammates and argued that he should be doing more work in the box.
“If you look at the actual number of goals he has scored [Nunez], it’s [not bad].”
“People tend to forget that because of the chances that he has missed, and that’s always going to be the case, you know that.”
“With strikers, it’s all about when you are in the penalty box, do you score enough from the chances that you get, and that’s one of the criticisms with Nunez.”
“But others have to step up. Gakpo has got to step up. He has not played an awful lot of games this season. When he comes in, he has got to get in the box.”
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The Dutch international, who joined Merseyside after being linked with a move to Manchester United, is a versatile player who can play in a variety of positions, but he is also a bit of a dexterous player, and in the end the left wing, where he played for many years, seems like the right position for him.
His deep dribbling can turn a battle with the centre-backs around, but he is often slow off the ball and if he is to make it big as a centre-forward, he needs to work more closely with his team-mates and improve not only his goal tally but also his goal conversion rate to turn chances into points in the attackers’ ranks as a whole.
Can the 24-year-old forward find further success in England?