Steven Gerrard has never been shy about saying what he thinks, and his latest comments on Cody Gakpo’s situation at Liverpool are exactly the kind of blunt, no-nonsense assessment that fans have come to expect from the club legend. With transfer speculation swirling around the Dutch international all summer, first from Tottenham and now from Manchester City, Gerrard has cut through the noise with a message that Liverpool supporters will want their board to hear loud and clear: do not sell Cody Gakpo, and definitely do not sell him to a direct rival.
The Gakpo saga has dragged on for weeks now, ever since reports first emerged that Tottenham were preparing bids for the Dutchman as part of Roberto De Zerbi’s attacking rebuild in North London. Spurs have been one of the busiest clubs in the market this summer, splashing serious money on a host of new arrivals, and Gakpo was reportedly identified as a priority target to fill out their left flank. Liverpool, for their part, have consistently maintained that they have no intention of letting him go, but as anyone who follows the transfer window closely knows, “no intention” can change very quickly once the fees on the table start climbing. Now, with Manchester City reportedly entering the race as well, the situation has taken on a new and more uncomfortable dimension for Liverpool fans, and it is precisely this development that has prompted Gerrard’s intervention.
“First Spurs, now City. Who knows, Chelsea and Arsenal might be next, this is exactly why Liverpool cannot strengthen a rival,” Gerrard said, and it is hard to argue with the logic. There is a difference between selling a player to a club outside the top six, where the competitive impact on your own title or top-four ambitions is negligible, and selling a player directly into the ranks of a team you are competing with every single season for major honours. Spurs finished as one of the most active spenders of the summer and are clearly building something serious under De Zerbi. City, even in a transitional period under Pep Guardiola, remain one of the most ruthless and well-run operations in world football. Handing either of them a proven Premier League performer who has already shown he can influence games at the highest level is not a decision to be taken lightly, and Gerrard’s warning that this could open the floodgates to further interest from Chelsea and Arsenal is a genuinely uncomfortable thought for anyone who bleeds red. Once one direct competitor gets the green light, others tend to follow, sensing weakness or a willingness to negotiate, and suddenly a player who was supposed to be a squad cornerstone becomes public transfer property for half the league.
What makes Gerrard’s comments land even harder is the timing. This is not some abstract, hypothetical concern about Gakpo’s potential. This is a reaction to something that happened on the pitch, in a Liverpool shirt, against Newcastle, in the opening weeks of the season. Gakpo started and scored in that fixture, and by most accounts he was one of the shining lights in an afternoon where several of his more heralded teammates struggled to get going. Gerrard did not hold back on this point either. “He scored against Newcastle when the rest of their attack can barely get a shot on target. Isak was nowhere, Wirtz struggled, Rio also, but Gakpo stepped up. Munoz and Szoboszlai were the other positives.” That is about as pointed a piece of analysis as you will hear from a former captain, and it carries weight precisely because it is grounded in specifics rather than vague sentiment. This was not Gerrard simply saying “Gakpo is a good player, keep him.” This was Gerrard looking at a matchday squad sheet, comparing output across the frontline, and drawing a clear conclusion: in a Liverpool attack that includes some of the most expensive and most talked-about signings in recent memory, it was the man being linked with an exit who delivered when it mattered.
There is something almost poetic about the idea of Alexander Isak, a striker whose reputation and price tag put him among the most feared forwards in Europe, struggling to make an impact in the very fixture where Gakpo stepped up. Isak’s move was one of the headline transfers of recent windows, and expectations around him have understandably been sky high. Every young forward, every marquee signing, goes through spells of adjustment, and it would be unfair to draw sweeping conclusions from a single match. But Gerrard’s point was never really about condemning Isak, Wirtz, or Rio individually. It was about illustrating a broader truth that Liverpool fans have quietly understood for a while now: reputation and price tag do not always correlate with match-day impact, and sometimes the player delivering the goods is the one whose future at the club is, bizarrely, the one being debated in the papers. Florian Wirtz arrived with enormous expectation attached to his name, hailed as one of the most gifted young attacking midfielders in European football, and it is only natural that there will be an adjustment period as he gets up to speed with the physicality and tempo of the Premier League. The same applies to Rio Ngumoha, a hugely exciting academy graduate whose long-term ceiling looks sky high but who, like any young player finding his feet at the top level, will have games where things do not click. None of this diminishes their long-term prospects. But it does reinforce exactly the point Gerrard was making: in the here and now, in a results-driven business, Gakpo is producing.
It is also worth acknowledging the other names Gerrard singled out for praise, because context matters here. Victor Munoz and Dominik Szoboszlai were the other bright spots in that Newcastle performance, according to Gerrard’s assessment, and it says something about the current state of Liverpool’s attack that a settled core group, rather than the marquee new faces, ended up carrying the team on the day. Szoboszlai has long been a divisive figure among sections of the fanbase, sometimes praised for his energy and versatility, sometimes criticised for lacking a clear defined position, but performances like this are exactly the kind of evidence that should silence those doubts, at least for now. Munoz, meanwhile, is a newer face at Anfield, and any positive contribution from a summer arrival still finding his feet in a new league, a new culture, and a new dressing room is worth highlighting. Put together, what Gerrard is really describing is a picture of a Liverpool team where the standout performers were not necessarily the ones with the biggest reputations or the biggest price tags, but the ones who simply did their jobs on the day. And at the very top of that list, in Gerrard’s eyes, sits Cody Gakpo.
This brings us to perhaps the most pointed part of Gerrard’s comments, and the part that Liverpool’s decision-makers should be paying closest attention to. “Even if Liverpool sign Barcola, Mbaye or Minteh, you keep Gakpo. You need players who can actually change a game.” This is a crucial distinction, and one that often gets lost in the noise of a transfer window. There is a tendency, particularly among clubs with significant resources, to treat squad building as a simple numbers game: bring in enough new attacking talent and any departure becomes justifiable, a mere reshuffling of assets rather than a genuine loss. But Gerrard’s comment cuts against that logic. Bradley Barcola, Ibrahim Mbaye, and Yankuba Minteh are all exciting, talented young attacking players who would improve almost any squad in world football, and Liverpool’s interest in each of them is entirely understandable given the direction the club wants to move in. But potential is not the same as proven ability to change a match in real time, under pressure, in the Premier League, and that is precisely the quality Gerrard believes Gakpo already possesses. Signing exciting young talent from Ligue 1 or the Championship is a bet on the future. Keeping a player who has already demonstrated he can deliver goals and moments of quality in the here and now is a guarantee on the present. Good squads need both, and Gerrard’s argument is essentially that Liverpool are at risk of sacrificing the guarantee in pursuit of the bet.
There is also a tactical and squad-balance dimension to this that is worth unpacking further. Gakpo’s versatility has always been one of his most underrated assets. Since arriving from PSV Eindhoven, he has proven capable of playing across the front line, whether as a central striker, a left-sided forward, or in a slightly deeper attacking role, and that kind of flexibility is invaluable to a manager trying to navigate a long, gruelling season across multiple competitions. Andoni Iraola, like any manager inheriting a talented but evolving squad, will need players who can adapt to different systems and different opponents without requiring wholesale changes to the team shape. A more rigid forward, brilliant in one specific role but limited outside of it, does not offer the same tactical insurance. Losing that kind of adaptability from the squad, especially to a direct rival, would represent a real strategic setback, regardless of how promising the potential replacements might be on paper.
There is also the human and dressing-room element to consider, something that a manager and captain like Gerrard understands better than most pundits or analysts working purely from statistics and reports. Squad culture and depth are not just about aggregate quality on paper; they are about experience, temperament, and reliability when the pressure is on. Gakpo has been at the club for a few seasons now. He has experienced the highs and lows of Premier League and European football with Liverpool, understands the demands of the badge, and has built relationships with teammates and staff. There is real value in that kind of continuity, particularly during a period when the club is also integrating several high-profile new signings and adjusting to a new manager. Replacing a proven, versatile, experienced attacking option with unproven quantities, however talented, injects an additional layer of risk and uncertainty into a squad that is already navigating plenty of change. Selling Gakpo now would not simply be swapping one player for another; it would be removing one of the few stable, reliable reference points in an attack that is still finding its identity.
None of this is to say that Liverpool’s interest in Barcola, Mbaye, or Minteh is misguided. Quite the opposite; strengthening the squad with young, hungry, technically gifted attacking talent is exactly the kind of forward planning that keeps a club competitive at the highest level for years, not just months. The issue Gerrard is highlighting is not the pursuit of these players, but the idea that their arrival should be treated as justification for moving Gakpo on, particularly to a direct Premier League rival. Squads win trophies with depth, not just star power at the top of the team sheet, and a genuine title challenge or push for Champions League glory requires multiple players capable of stepping up when others are off form or unavailable through injury and fatigue. Gakpo, on the evidence of that Newcastle performance and indeed across his time at the club, is exactly that kind of player. Removing him from the equation while simultaneously integrating several new and unproven faces seems, at best, a significant gamble, and at worst, a self-inflicted weakening of the squad at precisely the moment it needs strengthening.
Gerrard’s closing line was as simple and direct as the rest of his assessment: “Selling him now would make absolutely no sense.” It is hard to find much to disagree with in that conclusion. Liverpool are in the process of rebuilding and reshaping their attacking options following a summer of major changes, including the high-profile departure of Mohamed Salah and the significant investment made in bringing in new talent. In that context, stability matters. Proven performers matter. And perhaps most importantly, not handing your quality to a direct rival matters, both competitively and symbolically. Every time a club sells a good player to a team they are competing directly against, it sends a message, not just to that rival club, but to the rest of the dressing room and the fanbase, about ambition and priorities. Liverpool have spent years building a reputation as a club that backs itself, that competes at the very top, and that does not make short-sighted decisions purely for financial expediency. Selling Gakpo to Spurs or City now, right after he has shown his value in a competitive Premier League fixture, would represent a genuine departure from that identity.
Ultimately, what Gerrard has done here is articulate something that a lot of Liverpool supporters have likely been feeling but perhaps struggled to put into words amid the constant churn of transfer rumours and speculation. It is easy to get swept up in the excitement of a big-money move for an exciting new attacker, and it is easy to assume that any departure can simply be papered over by an equally exciting arrival. But football, at its core, still comes down to what happens on the pitch, week in and week out, and on the evidence available right now, Gakpo is delivering. Whether Liverpool’s hierarchy ultimately heed Gerrard’s advice remains to be seen, and transfer windows have a habit of moving in directions that even the most experienced voices in the game cannot always predict. But for now, the message from one of the club’s most decorated former captains is unambiguous: keep hold of Cody Gakpo, resist the temptation of a lucrative offer from a direct rival, and trust the player who has already shown, when it mattered most, that he can be the difference.