'Boyhood Arsenal fan' Curtis Jones is just what stuttering Gunners need - but he's become too important for Liverpool to let go

Friday marked the four-year anniversary of Jones' first goal for Liverpool: a wonderful winner against Everton that made him the youngest scorer in a Merseyside derby since Robbie Fowler in 1994.

He was just 18 at the time but played with a maturity and a swagger that belied his young age. Consequently, it didn't actually come as much of a surprise to see him captain his boyhood club for the first time just over a year later.

Klopp had been smitten with Jones from the first time he'd seen him training with Pep Lijnders' 'Talent Group' at Melwood.

"I looked out of my office and it was "Ooof, wow!'" Klopp admitted. "The next question was 'How old is he?' When he was told Jones was just 15, the manager was even more incredulous: "He was already clearly a massive talent!"

Jones played 34 times in all competitions during the 2020-21 season but it was telling that he barely featured when Liverpool were bidding to win a historic quadruple at the business end of the following campaign.

He was still held in very high esteem by Klopp and his coaching team, which is why bids from Leeds United and Aston Villa were summarily dismissed.

Lijnders labelled him a "physical machine" - but one of the problems was that he was prone to breaking down, suffering unfortunate but all-too-regular injuries.

His inability to lock down a regular starting spot was about more than fitness issues - or the intense competition for places - there was an inhibition in his play.

"I'd always been a lad who just wanted to go and score goals and pick up the ball and run," Jones explained. "But I kind of felt like I hit a wall, and I couldn't really take the next step."

Consequently, flair gave way to fear, resulting in Jones adopting a far more cautious playing style. Rather than impose himself on the game, he slowed it down, much to Klopp's frustration.

"I love the boy and I love the potential he has," he told GOAL in 2022. "But we have to now really make the next steps and make sure that he fulfils the potential he has on the pitch.

"He's young, very young, but from what I see his ­potential is just incredible. So, we have to find a way to show that much more often. That's where we are in Curtis' development."

And that's arguably where they remained until halfway through last season.

Liverpool's 2022-23 campaign was a hard slog but not without its successes. The Reds may have failed to win a major trophy but they finished the season strongly for two reasons, one of which drew far more headlines than the other.

The daring decision to regularly move regular right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold into midfield added a whole new dimension to Liverpool's play, and drew plenty of plaudits as a consequence, but the recall of another homegrown talent was arguably just as significant.

Liverpool didn't lose a single Premier League game after Jones was restored to the starting line-up for the trip to Chelsea on April 4, with his ability to rapidly recover and quickly distribute the ball proving integral to an 11-match unbeaten run. Statistically speaking, there is no more accurate passer in the Liverpool squad.

Unfortunately, his momentum was once again checked by injury this season - as well as a three-game ban for a harsh but avoidable red card in a 2-1 defeat at Tottenham, which remains the Reds' only league loss to date.

However, the changes to and improvements in his game are obvious. After Liverpool's counter-pressing master-class against Newcastle that Klopp claimed should be taught in football schools, he singled Jones out for special praise, stating the Scouser "sets the level for how it should look" - which is quite the compliment.

Even more encouragingly, Jones is now playing at the pace that Klopp has long demanded of him, resulting in the kind of dynamic display that saw him score twice in the 5-1 rout of West Ham just before Christmas.

"I am really happy for him," the manager said after the League Cup quarter-final at Anfield. "The skill set he has is immense. Sometimes he forgets to speed the game up. Acceleration with the ball is really important.

"He has this speed but doesn’t use it often enough; we tell him quite frequently. Tonight, he did it, and hopefully that's an eye-opener for him."

The penny certainly seems to have dropped, and the hard work paying off.

As Liverpool forward Cody Gakpo pointed out in a recent post-match interview, Jones is reaping the rewards of spending hours and hours plugging away "behind closed doors" striving to deliver exactly what Klopp & Co. wanted from him. That was tough for someone that had found it all so easy until breaking into the senior side.

"I'd never been a kid who thought about being the first one to go and press or to try to run the most, so I've added that in my game. I’m trying to work on just the overall package," he admitted. "I've still got a lot of things to learn, but I'm getting there."

Which is why Arsenal's alleged interest would be wholly understandable. Jones is developing into the kind of all-action No.8 that Arteta has been missing from the moment he effectively replaced Granit Xhaka with Kai Havertz.

With Jones on board, Declan Rice could return to doing what he does best at the base of the midfield, instead of trying to do the work of two men in a midfield featuring two No.10s in Havertz and Martin Odegaard.

It's also been claimed that Jones was a boyhood Arsenal fan, even though every time he's signed a new contract at Anfield, he's mentioned the fact that he's been a Liverpool supporter his whole life.

Maybe it's true, maybe not. All we know for sure is that Liverpool have no intention whatsoever of letting go of a massive talent that is now perfectly poised to realise the enormous potential Klopp first saw in him from his office window all those years ago.