David Lynch heaps praise on Liverpool star after Arsenal draw

Milos Kerkez’s display in Liverpool’s 0-0 draw at league leaders Arsenal provided a timely reminder that reputations are too often shaped by moments, not matches.

Kerkez, a £40m summer arrival from AFC Bournemouth, has endured a baptism by opinion as much as by Premier League football. The criticism has been loud and sometimes lazy. Yet against one of the division’s best wide threat, he delivered an impressive performance that should shift the conversation from assumption to evidence.

David Lynch, speaking to Dave Davis for Anfield Index, shared his thoughts on Kerkez’s performance:

“I thought he was phenomenal. I really need someone to explain why people think that he is rubbish because he is a brilliant player.”

The idea that Kerkez is ‘rubbish’ has been repeated enough that it now travels independently of performance. Against Arsenal, he was anything but. He faced Bukayo Saka, one of the league’s most dynamic attackers, and though the winger “skins him early on in the game and people run with that,” the full 90 told a very different story.

Lynch continued: “If anyone actually watched the game you would see that Kerkez won his tackles and won his duels.”

Saka’s early success became a social media artefact, stripped of the context that followed. The problem wasn’t Kerkez getting beaten once, it was people not noticing that he recalibrated immediately and spent the rest of the match winning.

Lynch added another crucial detail: “Saka ends up getting took off early because he was locked down by Kerkez.”

Indeed, Saka’s withdrawal was a tacit concession that the battle had flipped. Far from being a weak link, Kerkez became the reason Arsenal’s right flank stopped functioning. He wasn’t passive, he was assertive, front foot, decisive in the tackle, strong in the duel, intelligent in recovery.

“He is an excellent player and has had plenty of good performances this season that have gone under the radar,” Lynch said, and that line could apply to a wider issue in modern football commentary. Players are analysed more harshly for joining big clubs than for failing at them, the scrutiny intensifies, the credit contracts.

At 22, Kerkez is young in age but advanced in profile. Lynch’s claim that “He’s only 22 and is already one of the best left-backs in the league. I thought he was fantastic again.”

It’s also worth remembering Liverpool’s broader context, with the club currently sitting 4th in the table. Individual performances therefore carry even greater weight, especially when they defy preconceptions.

And defy them he did. Kerkez won Man of the Match in a 0-0 draw that felt like far more than a stalemate.

Jamie Carragher’s comment that it was “like having Darwin Nunez at left-back” was sharp, quotable and widely circulated, but recent performances, including this one, suggest a player far more reliable than that comparison implies. His display against Arsenal proved that progress isn’t always linear, but class eventually speaks loudly enough to drown out the noise.