ROBBIE FOWLER
Our legend on the battle between his two old clubs
WITHOUT wishing to sound overly critical, how long do you allow a player to develop from raw and promising, into the finished article?
I ask because that’s all I heard throughout the game at the Etihad… Liverpool could surpass Manchester City when Jurgen Klopp converts Darwin Nunez’s rawness into the finished article.
For me, though, it should be IF, not when. How long do you give him?
Nunez arrived at Anfield almost 18 months ago now, and yet we are still talking about this potential, this ‘exciting rawness’.
But you can’t go through your entire career being raw, can you?
People have rightly said it is unfair to compare Nunez with Erling Haaland, because they are different strikers, at different stages of their development, and that’s true.
Yet, can you tell me what the difference in age between the two is? Let me tell you.
Haaland, 23, is a year younger than the Reds forward. So if anyone should be given leeway for being raw, it is him.
I do feel sympathy for Nunez, because he arrived at Liverpool at the same time Haaland came into the Premier League, and patently, the difference is massive, even if the City striker cost less, and their experience level was strikingly similar. We saw two moments in the first half which illustrated the gap between them.
Haaland’s goal was classic striker’s instinct. He made the supremely difficult look simple. Nathan Ake was barely 10 yards away, and a defender as good as Virgil van Dijk was touch tight. Yet he found that yard of space the best forwards always engineer, one touch and bang. A finish of the highest quality.
Nunez was in a similar position with the defence retreating in front of him, and that same space opened up in front of him. But there was no touch to open up a good shooting angle.
Instead, he was waiting for something to happen in front of him.
You could say he perhaps looked as though he didn’t have the confidence to shoot, but he scored twice for Uruguay only four days ago!
He also scored a massive goal against Argentina a week before. So maybe it’s not confidence, belief or whatever. Maybe it’s who he is as a striker. That difference was highlighted when Trent
Alexander-arnold got that superb equaliser to give Liverpool a point I think they deserved. Watch it again, and it was a mirror image of the Haaland goal, on his right foot.
One touch to open up the space superbly and create the perfect shooting angle, and bang. Quality finish.
The point is, though, you need your striker to do that. Yet Liverpool looked hesitant up front.
None of their strikers seemed ready to be direct and decisive in the box, instead all of them were waiting for something to happen, rather than making it happen themselves. Haaland, on the other hand, knew exactly what he wanted to make happen. He’s not one-dimensional in terms of his play, but in terms of his finishing, he is lethally one-dimensional. He knows exactly what he has to do. We saw at the Etihad, Liverpool are likely to be the strongest challengers to City this season. It was a hard-earned, deserved point, and they will get better. But my fear for them is, without the decisive speed of thought and movement up front, will they be able to kill off the teams, like Luton, where they have dropped points already this season? I do hope Klopp will convert the rawness of Nunez into something special that allows Liverpool to win the title, as Gary Neville suggested, but I’m not yet convinced it will actually happen.