I’m still on the Darwin bus. The fella is laden with threat.
Salah and Szoboszlai - technically gifted captains of their countries, fluffed their lines yesterday too. If any of the trio did what they reasonably should have, we beat the Mancs comfortably.
Isolating Darwin Nunez for criticism is misplaced for me.
On another note, I think our forward line looked a bit powder puff when Darwin went off. He has the pace and strength to keep any defence honest, and the Man Utd defence breathed a sigh of relief when he went off as it was all neat and tidy, in front of them, and fairly easy to defend.
There are definitely issues, but he’s also in the definitely keep pile for me.
Let’s see what he does under the new manager, and quite possibly in a future Liverpool side without Mo Salah. There will be an opportunity for him to step up.
If he falls short, he needs to be one of the group of strikers who is surpassed by a main man, possibly brought in with the Mo dough. Or sold on.
But I still see a striker who could potentially be world class. Goals and assists and causes problems for defenders. A fresh start in a refreshed team under a new man, and let’s see.
“The chance Nunez misses before half time, that’s unforgivable at this level. Especially when Liverpool are going for a title.”
“With a fading Salah going this summer, Liverpool need to get a quality striker in. Nunez is not going to win them titles.”
“In terms of Nunez and the club going forward. I think after two years, I don’t think there’ll be a massive improvement in him. I don’t think he’s enough to win you the biggest trophies.”
“I’m think I’m at the stage now with Nunez where there isn’t a question to ask [with his future]. After two years now, you need your man to score. This is the business end.”
It is difficult, as other players have matured into great finishers, but it is hard at the moment as he has cost us lots of points with his inept finishing and then also, won us games with quality, the 2nd is too few though.
He’ll get stick for the missed chance, but he made good contact and forced the keeper into a save. It’s not a million miles away from flying right past the keeper. There was a sequence not long before half time thought where he found some room on the edge of the box and had the ball threaded through to him. All he needed to do was to make a half turn, get the ball out in front of him and shoot. Instead his first touch saw the ball bounce ball out of the box - chance gone. It was abysmal…the worst of Heskey’s worst spell
I have to disagree. it needed to be a calm finish he had time, he looked up had a good 1st touch and should have passed it in but he just blasted it. Everything was right until the execution
There isn’t much doubt that he is not ready to be The Guy. But he is a pain in the ass to play against, and is still very much on the rising slope. I see him as part of the solution, definitely not the whole answer.
He has less PL goals this season than Chris Wood.I don’t know why people keep defending Nunez. Like it will be 2028 and some will still be saying that he will come good very soon. The sooner we get rid of him the better.
I don’t have much time for him these days but I don’t see anything wrong with what he said, other than these being the players of his former club he’s criticising instead of supporting.
I said it a few times before and I’ll say it again, Nunez isn’t and will never be the player who can win the titles to this club on his own. He can be a wilder sort of Firmino in terms of numbers (according to Transfermarkt, he has 33 goals and 17 assists in about 5400 minutes), he’ll get goals and assists through sheer application and effort but won’t be consistent about it and won’t turn many 0:0s into 1:0s.
Club has to find players around him who will be able to do it more often than not (and I’m not giving up on Jota and Gakpo either). I know it’s a difficult, almost an impossible task given that we had Mane and Salah in those positions and every player will be measured by that yardstick, but I genuinely believe that Salah is done at Liverpool, while Diaz definitely isn’t untouchable too.
He’s off to Saudi. He wants to live in a mosque or something. Haven’t you heard? It’s all over halfwit-Twitter.
Realistically, I wouldn’t be surprised if we received an offer from another European club this summer but there is no indication that he actually wants to move. There always seems to be an assumption that players are cattle to be bought and sold without the individual actually having personal agency. Maybe it’s a mindset of the PlayStation FIFA generation of fan?
I think the main issue with Mo, is he is still suffering from his injury and is expected to make an instant comeback at the wrong end of the season. If this was the 5th game of the season we would be laughing at the issue with 30+ games to go. So to speak.
I was hoping (or still do while he’s here) that he can reach a Cavani level. There’s a level above Cavani, but he’s not even at Cavani’s yet. Two players who share similar strengths and weaknesses.
This season he has made some improvement, but it’s not like he will get another few years here if it stays like this.
It’s possible that he gets a third season, especially under a new man, but then that might be his last chance. We might not even sign a new striker this summer, but the new man in charge might change a few things.
C’est la vie at a club like Liverpool and where we want to be. He gets support from the stands, but realistically there’s no drama if he’s not good enough long term. Not the first, not the last. We move on to new names, he finds himself a new club.