Liverpool had to dig deep to beat Wolverhampton Wanderers and restore their seven-point lead at the top of the Premier League.
If you want to be a champion, you have to win in different ways; teams will not get steamrolled each week. Arne Slot‘s side showed resilience against a relegation-threatened team that took all ten of the shots in the second half, with Matheus Cunha scoring a brilliant curved shot from outside the area after the hour mark.
Already two goals to the good following Luis Diaz‘s strike and Mohamed Salah‘s penalty, Anfield turned to some of its fringe players to succeed, with the club’s academy proving its new-found worth once again.
Liverpool’s thriving academy
Through Trent Alexander-Arnold, Steven Gerrard before him and Michael Owen and Robbie Fowler too, Liverpool have long enjoyed a strong-bonded connection with their homegrown talent.
But there’s been a shift in recent years, the scale of Kirkby’s talent pool stretching. Last season, ‘Klopp’s Kids’ proved instrumental in winning the Carabao Cup, and are showing plenty of promise under Slot’s wing.
Against Wolves, Jarell Quansah returned to form with a stunning second-half performance, so important in rebuffing the visitors’ threat.
After the game, journalist Bence Bocsak said that “so many people” wrote Quansah off after his slow start to the season, but that he “didn’t put a foot wrong” as Anfield breathed a sigh of relief upon claiming a fourth win in five top-flight fixtures.
With Conor Bradley also impressing, replacing Alexander-Arnold after the hour mark, and Harvey Elliott waiting in the wings, it feels like FSG have got the balance just right, suffusing an ambitious first team with the perfect amount of homegrown potential.
Who will be next? Already, the likes of Rio Ngumoha and Trey Nyoni have earned senior minutes this term and look to be top talents, but Liverpool might find that they have another young forward who could be Slot’s own version of Cunha.
Slot may already have his own Cunha
You may think of Diaz when it comes to Liverpool having their own version of Wolves’ talisman. But in actuality, the Brazilian’s style could be followed by a much younger member of the Reds family.
The man in question is Trent Kone-Doherty. Aged 18, the forward has been a potent threat in Liverpool’s academy over the past several years.
A Republic of Ireland youth international, Liverpool signed him from Derry City back in 2022 and he quickly made his presence known, with skills and speed at the centre of his game plan.
He was handed his senior debut last month too, entering the fray in the second half as Liverpool not so much bowed as tumbled out of the FA Cup, slain by giant killers Plymouth Argyle.
It was a substitution that illustrated the bareness of Liverpool’s bench, but this rising star showed application and got into the thick of the action, taking 11 touches, completing his one attempted dribble and winning his only duel, as per Sofascore. That kind of combativeness speaks toward his future, and it’s a glowing endorsement.
With 30 goals and seven assists across 67 youth fixtures for the Merseysiders, Kone-Doherty has showcased his star quality in goalscoring. More importantly, he’s able to juggle his output across the frontline, something that Cunha has found much success with at Molineux, less of a striker and more of a goalscoring winger or number ten, thrusting forward and into space.
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Trent Kone-Doherty: LFC Youth Stats by Position |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
|
Position |
Apps |
Goals |
Assists |
|
Left winger |
30 |
21 |
4 |
|
Right winger |
14 |
5 |
2 |
|
Centre-forward |
2 |
1 |
0 |
|
Centre-back |
1 |
0 |
0 |
|
Stats via Transfermarkt |
|||
This isn’t to say that Diaz doesn’t mirror some of these interesting attributes, but the Colombian is 28 years old and nearing the penultimate year of his Liverpool contract.
Whether Liverpool retain his services by offering a new bumper package leading into his 30s (which goes against FSG’s typical position) remains to be seen, but Kone-Doherty’s potential to star for many, many years suggests that he is the one who could become Liverpool’s next dynamic and positionally versatile attacking threat.
Kone-Doherty has also described himself as a “fearless” forward, owing to his sharp pace and willingness to engage with opponents. This is something that provides further similarities to Cunha, who has averaged 1.3 tackles and 5.6 successful duels per Premier League match this season, as per Sofascore.
In the past, U18s coach Marc Bridge-Wilkinson has commented on the teenager’s skill set, saying:
“He’s a very good player and showed he can finish, he can go on the outside, and whether or not he’s up against people who are bigger or a lot stronger, he still has the ability and football brain to go past people.”
Plucking a thread from such comments, it’s curious to note that he has received praise for his ability against bigger players, something that Cunha does so well himself through balance and raw energy and technical quality.
Despite plying his art within a club that teeters on outside of the relegation zone, Cunha has proved that he has enough quality to perform for the best of them, ranking among the top 3% of Premier League forwards this season for non-penalty goals per 90, as per FBref.
That, surely, is the profile that Kone-Doherty should work toward emulating, for he boasts the right physical strengths and natural-born striking instinct to do so.
Indeed, Liverpool academy reporter Lewis Bower has hailed Kone-Doherty for his “exceptional” finishing, and with such an exciting and balanced style of play, it may well be that Slot unleashes Liverpool’s own version of Cunha down the line, potentially saving the club millions.
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