'He is a big talent' - what's been previously said about Portsmouth 'new boy' Kaide Gordon - including glowing reference from Jurgen Klopp

The 20-year-old winger will move to Fratton Park on loan until the end of the season, having spent the first half of the 2024-25 campaign at Championship rivals Norwich City.

The former Derby youngster’s arrival will bolster the Blues’ attacking options as they look to secure their second-tier status, while the England under-20 international will become the second piece of transfer business Pompey have concluded with the Premier League leaders in the past six months, after Havery Blair swapped Anfield for the south coast last summer.

Gordon will arrive at Fratton Park, still highly rated by the Reds, who paid the Rams an initial £1m for his services back in 2021.

But what have those who have played a huge part in his development to date said about the talented youngster, who has made seven senior Liverpool appearances? He’s what we discovered.

Jurgen Klopp - after Gordon scored in Liverpool’s 4-1 FA Cup victory against Shrewsbury in January 2022

‘That's Kaide. When he is in these (goal-scoring) situations, he is really calm. I will not say that for the rest of his career in these situations that he will always score, but I'm pretty sure he will more often than not because that is just him.

‘I know he is the second youngest goalscorer for Liverpool, which is absolutely exceptional, especially when the other one was Michael Owen, but there is a long way to go.

‘No problem. Kaide has time. We will give him the time. He will have his minutes here and there.

‘He’s good. A lot of things to improve, a lot of things to settle, a lot of things to learn but there’s a lot of things already there. We are really happy to have him around and we will treat him carefully, let me say it like this. I am really happy that he is here, he is a big talent.’

Pep Lijinders - Klopp’s former assistant at Liverpool and the one who promoted him to the Reds’ first-team training ranks

‘Before pre-season, we always make sure that our biggest talents start a week earlier than we start. They start with the 23s training, so I went to the training ground to watch them.

‘I see one player who has fire in each moment that he touches the ball. He passes players like they are not even standing there. I called Jurgen immediately and said “wow, we have a new player here”.

‘We take this player into pre-season, and when do you know that you have a good player around you? It's when the senior players start taking care of this young player.

‘When you see James Milner speaking with Kaide, when you see Trent (Alexander-Arnold) becoming like a proper mentor and that you see they invite him to sit on the table, it made it good to him to adapt to our style.

‘He is what you see a lot with these kind of wingers – they can outplay, they can combine – but he has a goal in him.

‘And he has this natural ability to be in the box between the goalposts to score, even when the cross comes from the opposite side, for example. Not many talents have that.

‘He is a typical Liverpool Football Club winger, in my opinion, because he has goals, he has speed. We really like him and we are really happy he is with us.’

Barry Lewtas speaking last summer after the winger returned to training after 18 months out with a pelvic injury.

‘Kaide is ready for the next step and the next challenge. This season has been part of his reintegration to the game. He needed an opportunity to play and find rhythm in training every day.

‘Slowly but surely it wasn’t just about putting individual training sessions together, we were able to go week to week where he was playing games regularly.

‘For somebody who has had the injuries he’s had, building confidence in his body was what was really important.

‘Obviously, he wasn’t going to lose his ability he had before, that was always going to be there. It was a case of him having the chance to practice and play and his performances for us were really good, and his consistency improved as you may expect.’

Wayne Rooney - who handed Gordon his Derby debut as a 16-year-old

‘I brought Kaide up with the first-team initially to train with us for a week to see how he reacted to it, and he was one of the best trainers.

‘I kept him with us for a couple of weeks and he’s been training at the same level, if not to a better level to a lot of the other first-team players.

‘As I said to the players: if you train hard and train well, I will give you your chance. Kaide is a fantastic player and he has got a lot of potential.’

Norwich City sporting director Ben Knapper, following the winger’s loan move to Norwich last summer

‘Kaide is an exciting young player who we're looking forward to working with this season.

‘We're thankful to everyone at Liverpool for trusting us with this next stage in his development, in what will be his first senior loan experience. He will add competition in wide areas, and we are hopeful this will be a mutually beneficial step for all parties.’

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