Given that our only other central forward seems to be Jota, and at a pinch Diaz, you would think that if the club thought he wouldn’t come good they would be looking to bring in replacements.
I think the other factors you raise are intriguing, but if I’m not wrong this season has seen a lot of tweaks to the way we play, even though the shape is largely the same. For example, we’re shooting a lot less as a whole, and I feel as though this has extended to him as well.
He’s no Salah, but his npXG + xAG seem to be really good, he just doesn’t translate them into the actual scoring numbers. I’m not sure if a system change will fix that in and of itself so much as getting some consistency with his finishing.
One thing’s for sure, his performance has plummeted this season in that regard. It’s quite interesting that for all the supposed being a one season wonder at Benfica, his npXG + xAG has actually carried over for the past two seasons.
That said, the numbers do back up my earlier hunch, that he’s just been shooting a lot less, at half the rate he used to shoot. That probably explains the halving of his xG figures.
For comparison, apart from this season, Salah’s shooting has actually been less accurate than Núñez in terms of being on target. For us, Núñez converts between 10-13% of his shots, while in all seasons bar his first season and the current season, Salah converts 12-14%. Not vastly different. Salah too is shooting less this season, but his conversion rate has become a lot more lethal. He’s still shooting 3x as much as Núñez is though.
Jota is supposed to be a great finisher, but his shots on target % is actually lower than Núñez, with the exception that he does convert a lot more of his shots on target.
Apart from last season (1.02) however his goals contribution per 90 (0.72, 0.73, 0.73, 0.87) has actually been rather consistent, albeit on a slightly higher level than Núñez (0.64, 0.84). On the other hand, Mané’s history with us reads: 0.73, 0.70, 0.67, 0.82, 0.58, 0.58. Firmino with 0.78, 0.53, 0.72, 0.62, 0.51, 0.51, 0.82, 1.11.
On newer forwards, we have Gakpo with 0.56, 0.71, and Díaz on 0.66, 0.54, 0.45.
What I’m saying is really that statistically he’s not far off from the rest of our forwards, but this season is not particularly good for us scoring goals in general. It’s easy to remember him missing sitters, being offside, seemingly just because he does so much in general. I think many comments after the previous 2 games were simply that he’s exhausting to play against just because he’s generally everywhere.
I’m not saying he was anything but shite against Newcastle, because let’s face it, it was a terrible performance. I just do think that the general hand-wringing about him is quite overblown.