"He is a life saver, to be honest," said Jurgen Klopp inside a packed press room at Craven Cottage on Wednesday evening. "Without Joey, nothing would have happened in the last, pretty much 13 or 14 weeks since Robbo was out."
Successful sides, title-winning teams, they require superstar players. But they also need others to step up over the course of long campaigns in multiple competitions. Joe Gomez has done that for Liverpool this season and Klopp understands the importance.
It is not just that Gomez has filled in at left-back during a period in which Andy Robertson and Kostas Tsimikas have been unavailable due to injury. The defender has prospered in the position that his Liverpool career began under Brendan Rodgers back in 2015.
The first time this season that Klopp deployed Gomez there came at Luton in November. At the time, Tsimikas was available so it seemed to be a specific ploy to counter-act the obvious physicality of a team that crosses more than any other in the Premier League.
"I think it is a really sensible one given Luton's set-pieces," Jamie Carragher told Sky Sports. "It also means Liverpool are basically set as a back three with Trent (Alexander-Arnold) cutting in. I think it makes a lot of sense." But the ploy has evolved into something else.
At Fulham, there were times when he dropped in to play an inverted role that allowed Conor Bradley to advance on the other flank. He is comfortable there, happy with and without the ball. "He is a real defender and he comes inside. He is doing that really well."
But the reason why Klopp called Gomez's performance "exceptional" is because Liverpool have not lost as much as expected in attack either. He has pushed on, creating almost as many chances from open play this season as Robertson and Tsimikas.
That long-awaited goal still eludes him despite firing off a couple of ambitious attempts to be the semi-final hero. "He tried a couple of times to finish the discussion about not scoring," laughed Klopp. "I would say, for my tastes, from a bit too far. But he still arrived."
Gomez is there alright, present and correct, and that was the concern. But Liverpool's longest-serving player is now injury-free and that five-year deal that he was awarded in 2022 appears fully justified. When fit and in form, Gomez remains a major asset.
"People forget how important Joey was in the best years that we had. I do not know how many games he played in the year when we became champion and the year when we won the Champions League but it was a lot. Rightly so, because he is a top-class player."
Gomez started 12 consecutive Premier League games in the winter of Liverpool's title-winning season. The hopes of an invincible campaign only came to an end when Dejan Lovren replaced him for the defeat at Watford on the final day of February.
But he has never been used as regularly as he is right now. In fact, Gomez has featured in 87.9 per cent of Liverpool's matches this season. That is a career high. The team's only Premier League defeat came against Tottenham - after Gomez was substituted.
Flexibility has helped, of course. His season began filling in for Virgil van Dijk following his red card against Newcastle before taking in a spell at right-back deputising for Alexander-Arnold. Being able to come on in that role has given Klopp a useful option.
The Liverpool boss referenced "the things that we could do with Trent when we brought Joey on" and that has directly helped him change games this season. The Premier League wins over Fulham and Crystal Palace came after making that tactical switch.
In both games, Gomez replaced a central midfielder and moved to right-back, freeing up Alexander-Arnold to step forward. It is from there that he can be at his most creative, scoring the winner at Fulham. Gomez himself was involved in the equaliser at Palace.
With Robertson fit once more, expect the Scot to slot back in at left-back soon. But Gomez has shown he can be a useful alternative, from the start or from the bench, bringing a different dynamic to Tsimikas, who is regarded as similar but inferior to Robertson.
As a left-back moving inside, right-back to unleash Alexander-Arnold, or in his favoured centre-back role, this is someone who has a unique remit within this squad. As the Liverpool supporters are fond of singing, maybe there really is nobody like Joe Gomez.