The deeply underappreciated player at the heart of Liverpool's title challenge

Mohammed Salah will get the headlines for his swashbuckling role when Liverpool put Newcastle United to the sword on Monday evening, but while the Egyptian was the sharp point at the end of wave after wave of attacks on Martin Dúbravka’s goal, he wasn’t the man making everything tick. That would be Curtis Jones.

The 22-year-old has been in and out of the Liverpool side since establishing himself in Jürgen Klopp’s first team squad back in 2020, always showing promise and a maturity beyond his years but never really putting himself on the map as a truly outstanding player - at least until this season. Jones has quietly improved over time without getting the plaudits he deserves and has added intelligence, economy and dynamism to his game. He is now filling the void left by Jordan Henderson’s controversial departure with grace and apparent ease and his outstanding performance against Newcastle, perhaps the best of his young career, felt like a statement.

He scored, of course, but that wasn’t really the most important thing he did even if the match was still, improbably, on a knife-edge at that point, and even given that it was a crucial intervention which may end up having a substantial impact on the title race, which Liverpool lead. When it comes down to it, he’ll probably never get an easier goal in his life, a simple tap-in from no distance after a sharp interchange down the right channel which allowed Diogo Jota to square the ball to Jones, who had ghosted through a tired defence without being detected. But what really counted was the way he recycled possession with remarkable speed and efficiency all evening, teeing off the barrage of attacks that were unleashed on the Newcastle goal.

Where Jones stood out was in his smart, simple passing, his understated first touch which always shifted the ball away from the nearest Newcastle player and into his own stride, and most of all his increasingly sharp movement. Jones, who has generally gamely plied the left-hand channel this season without much in the way of adventurous variation, found space and freedom across the field and took full advantage, drifting away from markers to find pockets of space left, right and centre, most of which were exploited to their fullest extent.

He will have tougher games, admittedly. Newcastle looked bedraggled and exhausted and neither midfield nor defence seemed willing or able to get close to Jones’ darting runs. Had Eddie Howe’s side been in better condition, a midfield assignment which saw him playing in spaces occupied by Bruno Guimarães might have been considerably tougher, but instead Jones found himself flitting effortlessly past the Brazilian’s ghost all night.

Still, he has developed the guile and grasp of the game to take full advantage of all the space that was on offer – and so he wound up getting five shots away, the most he’s ever managed in a league game, making 54 passes with 91% accuracy including two key balls which set up good chances for his side, and succeeding with every attempted dribble. Every time he got the ball he used it simply but purposefully, picking out great passes and collecting possession where his team needed him to. It was a model performance of its type, the sort Henderson used to put in on a regular basis during Liverpool’s best years under Klopp.

Like Henderson, Jones is economical and rarely looks for flashy plays. He doesn’t go on slaloming runs, the tricks and flicks stay on the training ground, and he’s seldom seen having a crack from 20 yards – instead, he simply gets hold of the ball and moves it to precisely where he needs to be. Henderson was fantastic at that, keeping play ticking over without making mistakes and making life twice as easy for everyone else around him – and Jones is picking up where his former team-mate left off when he moved to Saudi Arabia.

Jones isn’t necessarily as consistently excellent as Henderson was at his best, and doesn’t use the ball as efficiently just yet. Henderson, whose passing range was always deeply underappreciated, gets more balls into more dangerous areas than Jones, even over the last couple of years when his place in the England side has come under scrutiny, and he also generates more shooting chances – but Jones already surpasses Henderson in other ways. He’s better with the ball at his feet, which gives him more options in possession, and has the spatial awareness and extra half-yard of pace to get in between the lines to give his team-mates better passing options. It’s also worth noting that Henderson was nowhere near this good at the age of 22.

Jones can’t be too far away from being given a chance with England, although Euro 2024 will surely come too soon given Gareth Southgate’s conservative tendencies and his preference for sticking with players he knows and trusts – but in the long-term, Jones looks like a player who is not only a very well-rounded peg to be placed in the hole Henderson will soon leave behind for country as well as club, but also a player who has the talent and breadth of abilities to exceed his predecessor. Simply put, there is nothing Henderson can do that Jones isn’t already at least close to, and there is plenty that Jones can do better. If Liverpool are to win the title once more, then one suspects that Jones' ability to replicate the best qualities of Henderson will be a critical factor.

Henderson was always underappreciated, even at his absolute peak, because he was a straightforward, unfussy and frankly unsexy player. He had the least exciting role to play of anyone in a dominant Liverpool side – a facilitator, an essential cog in a slickly-oiled machine, but never the man who got to do any of the fun stuff. Jones may similarly end up getting less credit than he earns – but if he carries on developing at his current rate, and if delivers more domineering performances like Monday’s outing at Anfield, he’ll go a hell of a long way.