“He ain’t good enough” – Jamie O’Hara says ‘average’ Liverpool player isn’t a patch on ex-teammate
Jamie O’Hara has taken aim at one ‘average’ Liverpool player who he believes is ‘not good enough’ for the upper reaches of the Premier League.
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Cody Gakpo has come in for constant criticism from pundits and online fans over his performances this season, with the winger producing a disappointing return of just eight goals in 37 matches in the current campaign.
He endured another difficult night in the Reds’ 2-1 defeat to Wolves on Tuesday, inadvertently blocking a close-range effort from Curtis Jones early in the second half which otherwise would almost certainly have opened the scoring.
O’Hara slams ‘average player’ Gakpo
Speaking on Sky Sports News on Wednesday morning, O’Hara claimed that the Dutch winger isn’t of the requisite quality to atone for a positional peer who left Liverpool last summer.
The pundit said: “Luis Diaz was one of their best players. He left and you’ve got Cody Gakpo playing. He ain’t good enough. He’s an average player in the Premier League. He’s not good enough.”
Gakpo has shown he can do better for Liverpool
Although the Reds’ number 18 scored in the win over West Ham last weekend, he was also culpable of a horrendous miss earlier in that game, and there were reports in recent weeks that Liverpool could be open to offers for him in the summer if they were to sign a new left-sided winger.
One of the biggest criticisms of Gakpo is that he’s become too predictable in his play, routinely cutting inside from the flank and being easy for opposition defenders to read, in contrast with the more dynamic, off-the-cuff effervescence of Diaz.
It’d take an extraordinary burst of form for the Dutchman between now and the end of May to even come close to matching his tally of 18 goals from last season, although he’s not the only forward whose scoring output from 2024/25 has regressed significantly.
However, what the 26-year-old does have is the vocal support of his teammates, as Andy Robertson demonstrated on Instagram after the winger’s goal against West Ham, and we know how superb the Netherlands international can be when he’s at his best.
That hasn’t been the case for much of the current campaign, but with Arne Slot still being (overly?) cautious about the usage of Rio Ngumoha, Gakpo will continue to be an important presence for Liverpool in the final third of the season.
He needs to get back to somewhere near his best levels sooner rather than later, for his own sake as well as that of his club.
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