MISSING IN ACTION!
Reds need to cash in on wasteful Darwin
IT WOULD have been a perfect goal to sum up the counter-attacking brilliance of Liverpool under Jurgen Klopp at their best.
The clock had gone deep into the red zone at Anfield on Sunday, and the crowd had already feasted on four Liverpool goals.
Then, in the blink of an eye, they went from defending to attacking and the ball found its way to Darwin Nunez on the left wing.
He raced clear and his low cross to Mohamed Salah was bang on the money, and the Egyptian’s strike was true as well.
Flag
But cheers quickly faded due to a linesman’s raised flag. Nunez had mistimed his run and was caught offside — an all-too-familiar story with the Uruguayan.
Klopp gave him just 15 minutes against Spurs but Nunez still managed to mess up a one-on-one and was caught offside twice.
Nunez has been flagged for offside 32 times in the Premier League this season, more than any other player. Nicolas Jackson of Chelsea is next on the list with 27.
Last season, it was the same story. Again and again, Nunez got the timing of his runs wrong.
If he was a rookie player, you could make excuses for him. You could argue that it’s just teething problems, that soon it will all fall into place and his runs will cut defences open. But Nunez is no kid. He turns 25 next month and this is his sixth season at professional level. If the penny hasn’t dropped by now, when will it drop?
These are times when very few things happen by accident with pro footballers.
That’s because they are surrounded by agents and advisors. A lot of thought and planning is put into their moves — even on social media.
So it was interesting that, on Sunday night, Nunez’s Instagram account removed all of the photographs of him in action for Liverpool, bar one.
The only picture that stayed was one from the day he signed for the club in 2022. All the pictures from his days with Benfica — and representing Uruguay — remain on the site.
Whether Nunez did the deleting himself or it was due to others, we’ll probably never know.
But it has added to the growing feeling that Nunez may only have a couple of weeks left as a Liverpool player.
Klopp’s long goodbye will have its final wave this month, but he won’t be the only departure from Anfield this summer.
All of his coaching staff are leaving, and new manager Arne Slot will have
his own ideas on the squad. Michael Edwards, the transfer guru behind the best buys of the Klopp era, is already in situ with an even broader brief. Slot, like all new managers, will want to bring in some players and, the way Liverpool operate, that means there has to be sales to help finance such deals. Thiago Alcantara and Joel Matip are at the end of their contracts and will be allowed to move for free.
When you go through the squad and possible fees that might be on offer, the temptation to offload Nunez is huge.
Even if he isn’t what Klopp hoped he would be, Liverpool should still be able to get a hefty fee for him.
That Liverpool’s record signing has fallen short of expectations isn’t that much of a surprise.
It’s so often the case with the biggest-money transfers at the biggest clubs — expectations are so high that they often struggle.
Pattern
Nunez is built like a traditional centre-forward and there has been a pattern of such players struggling at Anfield.
Nobody needs to be reminded how underwhelming the likes of Andy Carroll, Christian Benteke and Mario Balotelli were at the club.
Those with long memories will cringe when they recall the brief Liverpool career of Sean Dundee.
Another big target-man of a striker, he managed just three games — where it was clear that he was way out of his depth.
Fernando Morientes was a big centre-forward who thrived but the Spaniard was an unusual mix — a number nine with the brain of a number 10.
Many of Liverpool’s striking failures had strong reputations but still couldn’t come up with the goods.
Karl-Heinz Reidle had won a World Cup and the Champions League but he only managed 11 goals in 60 games for Liverpool.
Jari Litmanen and Morientes were two other Champions League winners who couldn’t make an impact at Anfield.
El Hadji Diouf was regarded as the best striker in Africa and Djibril Cisse was acclaimed as the deadliest finisher in France. Neither of them came up to the mark when they pulled on a red jersey.
Liverpool, under Klopp, have been a team who give centre-forwards a huge amount of scoring opportunities.
Return
But, in Nunez, Liverpool have a main striker who takes very few of them.
His return in terms of taking what the number crunchers call Big Chances is just 20 per cent.
A return of 40 per cent, at least, is expected of strikers at the top clubs.
If Nunez had hit the expected numbers, Klopp would still have an eye on the title in his final weeks. Instead, Liverpool are already thinking of next season, and it may well be a season without Nunez.
MAN WITH A PLAN: Michael Edwards