Kaide Gordon will become one of the youngest players in Liverpool’s history when he makes his debut in tonight’s EFL Cup tie at Norwich tomorrow.
Gordon, who is 16 years and 349 days, is earmarked to get some minutes at Carrow Road, as Liverpool aim to progress in the competition that was once regarded as Anfield’s property after they won it eight times. They last reached the final in 2016.
Jurgen Klopp will make a raft of changes to the side that beat Crystal Palace on Saturday and Gordon, whom Liverpool signed from Derby County in February for an initial £1million, will definitely some part after making a huge impression on the coaching staff over the summer.
Derby will be due an add on to the fee, as part of a clause in the deal they struck to sell him, if Gordon starts but whether his opportunity comes now or further down the line, Liverpool are confident they have got a young player with significant potential.
‘Before pre-season we always make sure our biggest talents start a week earlier than we start,’ Pep Lijnders, Liverpool’s assistant manager, explained. ‘They start with the Under-23s so I went to the training ground to watch. I saw one player and he had fire in each moment he touched the ball.
‘He passed players like they are not standing there. I called Jurgen immediately and was like: “Wow! We have a new player here!” We take all these young players to pre-season and when do you know you have a good player around you? It is when the senior players start taking care of them.
‘So when you see James Milner speaking with Kaide, when you see Trent (Alexander-Arnold) becoming like a proper mentor to him, when you see that they invite him to sit at the table – and all our boys invited him in the group and that made it good for him to adapt to our team and our style.
‘He is what you see a lot with these wingers – they can play but they can combine – but he has a goal in him and he has this natural ability to be in the box between the goal posts to score even when a cross comes from the opposite side and not many talents have that.
‘They maybe have dribbling skills but they don’t have that desire to shoot, to come in the box, to score. He is a typical Liverpool FC winger, in my opinion, because he has goals, he has speed. We really like him and really like that he is with us.’
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