Martin Keown has heaped praise on Joe Gomez for his excellent defensive showing against Manchester City, insisting he always had the confidence the quality of the Liverpool centre-back would shine through.
Gomez has battled with constant injury setbacks since joining the club from Charlton Athletic in 2015, preventing him from establishing himself as Jurgen Klopp's go-to partner alongside Virgil van Dijk.
The 25-year-old ruptured his left knee patellar tendon during an international break in November 2020, ruling him out for the remainder of the 2020/21 season, having previously suffered an ACL injury on his opposite knee in 2015 to rule him out for 15 months.
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Gomez struggled for first-team minutes last season following the return to fitness of Joel Matip and Virgil van Dijk, as well as the summer arrival of Ibrahima Konate, but has featured more regularly in Klopp's team this term and is now just one game shy of equalling the total number of Premier League appearances he made during the whole of the last campaign.
His best performance yet arrived on Sunday afternoon after helping Liverpool to a huge three points at Man City's expense, leaving a lasting impression on ex-Arsenal defender Keown in the process.
"Liverpool's entire defence was exceptional in their win over Manchester City, but I was especially pleased with Joe Gomez's performance alongside Virgil van Dijk," he wrote in his BBC Sport column.
"It's four years since they were first paired together at centre-half for the Reds, when Gomez was 21. Back then, in November 2018, I said we might be seeing the start of one of the all-time great Premier League partnerships in central defence.
"We've been denied that because of the serious injury that Gomez suffered while training with England in November 2020, when he ruptured the patellar tendon in his left knee. I still always believed in Gomez, who has hardly played at centre-half since, but I knew it would take time for him to recover because I know that injury well, and the saga that comes with it. That's why Sunday was a very big day for him."
Explaining how he can relate to the struggles Gomez has faced during his Liverpool career, Keown continued: "I suffered a partial tear of my patellar tendon playing against Sweden at the 1992 European Championship, and it was the most debilitating injury of my career. I was out of action for four months, but it took me a couple of years to get my pace back completely, and be able to deal with a striker's acceleration the same way I used to,"
"It took much longer than that for me to get over it completely, and it is serious enough to be something you can end up nursing for the rest of your career. Gomez's was a complete tear, where the tendon is separated from the kneecap, so it was worse than mine. Even for me, though, it was an injury that stayed with me."
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