The Fire and Frustration of Cody Gakpo

Liverpool's Dutch winger takes a lot of criticism. He can irritate but his positive record deserves credit too.

Cody Gakpo frustrates huge sections of the Liverpool fanbase. He doesn’t have the physical presence his size suggests he should. He hasn’t been linking up well with his new left flank colleague Milos Kerkez either (albeit there have been flickers of improvement recently).

At face value, Gakpo leading the 2025/26 Premier League for ball carries of at least five metres that end with a shot or chance created should be a positive for him to wear proudly. In reality, many of those efforts end with the ball nowhere near the opposition goal.

Here’s the Dutchman’s Premier League shot map for this season, via Understat. Kopites won’t need to read this sentence to know that the efforts within the white oval were most likely preceded by Gakpo dribbling in from the flank before unleashing a wasteful shot. There must’ve been better options, Cody?

His performance in Liverpool’s 2-0 win at West Ham summed him up superbly. Gakpo turned possession over five times through mis-controlling the ball, hitting that mark for the third time in the league this season. Mohamed Salah has done this twice, nobody else in the squad has blemished their record to this extent at all.

Four of them were in the final third, with one of those in the box, ensuring the Reds lost momentum when in very dangerous areas. And, inevitably, he had a wasteful long range shot. Indeed, it was the furthest distance from which Gakpo has fired a goal attempt this season. Hopefully someone who was in the second tier of the stand can confirm if they caught it.

The win also showed his positive side, though, as the 26-year-old assisted and scored Liverpool’s two goals. Gakpo has made 33 non-penalty goal contributions in the Arne Slot era, second to #OnlySalah. Starting the count at March 1 for the sake of argument puts the Netherlands international top. That’s clearly an arbitrary time period chosen to make a point but it covers 34 matches, it’s not nothing.

Perhaps this is part of the problem. If Gakpo is the leading contributor over such an extended period, it’s only because Salah’s form has plummeted. Hugo Ekitike, Alexander Isak, Diogo Jota and Darwin Núñez have the same tally between them at centre forward; maybe one of them would be top with as much playing time as Gakpo.

Maybe, maybe not. If they could finish better, the former PSV Eindhoven man would have amassed more assists too. At a time of huge upheaval in the Liverpool front line, Cody Gakpo is arguably the one man consistently keeping it afloat.

It can be hard to make a case for his importance with a straight face. The Reds’ highest value chance that has gone unconverted in league or Europe so far in 2025/26 was missed by Gakpo against Real Madrid. He is responsible for missing three of the six best - per xG - chances from six yards or closer in matches that were lost, against both Manchester clubs and PSV.

The two versus United and his former team would’ve been Kop end equalisers, a situation guaranteed to get fans onside if the ball hits the net. Firing off target only drives the narrative in the opposite direction.

It’s somewhat unfair to highlight the four opportunities mentioned above as they are the only Opta-defined big chances Gakpo has missed this season. Salah wasted eight in a row until Emi Martínez kindly passed the ball to him, while Isak remains on a streak of six unconverted (as the chance from which he scored at the London Stadium was not deemed ‘big’).

Gakpo has only scored four fewer goals from non-penalty big chances than Salah in the Slot era despite having less than half as many. Among the players with a decent sample, only Luis Díaz has a higher conversion rate since the summer of 2024. Revisiting the Cody Backpost phenomena which proved so successful for them last season would be massive for the Liverpool of today.

If only Gakpo’s teammates had been as effective with the big chances that he has created for them. Second to Salah by a long margin last term, Liverpool’s number 18 has set up at least four more than any of his colleagues in 2025/26.

The average conversion rate for non-penalty big chances is around 39 per cent, with those created by Salah under Slot six points higher. Gakpo, meanwhile, has seen just 18 per cent of his rewarded with an assist. If the big chances he has created were converted at the rate he has put his away, he’d have an extra nine assists. There’d be no grumbling about his output then.

The lack of goals via Gakpo’s creativity has hit ridiculous levels this season. Ryan Gravenberch has seen two of the three big chances he set up converted. For his countryman, those figures are one and 12 respectively. If that wasn’t bad enough, it was Gakpo’s shot that led to Dominik Szoboszlai’s big chance against PSV. With no credit to officially assign for creating it, he scored. Of course he did.

Gakpo’s healthy numbers for setting up and shooting big chances mean he is the only player averaging at least 0.2 expected goals per 90 minutes for both in 2025/26. Of the two players above him in the following chart, Federico Chiesa created four golden opportunities against the might of Southampton while the only one Isak has set up was for Gakpo himself (at Chelsea).

Liverpool play Sunderland on Wednesday night. It would be a surprise if Gakpo didn’t start. We should run a book on the minute in which he will cut in from the left before shooting wastefully. I’ve got the 17th, you?

He makes us tear our hair out. We will do so again. The frustration will be worth it for the fire though. If Gakpo’s colleagues start converting his chances at anything like an expected rate, the blaze will be tough to put out.