Liverpool are in a scramble for the last few days of the transfer window. Cody Gakpo is seemingly one step away from joining Manchester City.
Richard Hughes and his recruitment team are now left searching for replacements. We say replacements in plural because there is an understanding that if Gakpo were to leave, Liverpool would probably need not one but two more additions in the forward line, and that’s before we mention all the other reinforcements that are needed in other areas of the pitch.
So far there’s a lot of speculation about Ismaila Sarr and Yankuba Minteh. But lots of journalists including Fabrizio Romano have hinted at Liverpool looking at a ‘mystery’ attacker.
So just who could this mystery attacker be?
Let’s have a look at some of the alternative options.
William Gomes
The Porto winger has been spoken about quite a lot without there being any concrete links. Gomes fits the profile. He is young, left-footed and he is very quick.
He is a decent one vs one wing, but he is more of a young Mo Salah profile in the sense that rather than facilitating attackers and looking to create chances, a lot of times he is looking to create a chance for himself to shoot.
Gomes will look to cut onto his left foot and unleash a shot most of the time.
This is his action map from Scoutlabs. As you can see there are a lot of runs, some passes across the box. But very few crosses. And most of his runs end with him cutting into the middle.
Hit shooting map is a demonstration of that. Gomes takes a lot of shots from areas where you’d expect Mo Salah to shoot from. But his shot selection when you watch him in action can still be poor, he doesn’t always find the separation from the defender and while he does have a good left foot, it is inconsistent.
He has outperformed his xG by 0.12 per 90 minutes, which is quite unsustainable.
