Darwin NUNEZ: 2024/25

Kirkby 2024/25
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Yeah. It’s not hating on him. We can all love his industry and workrate. We can all appreciate that he’s a cracking lad and seem well liked amongst the squad. We love the chaos. We can see how opposition defenders hate him. None of that is in doubt.

I just think, when it comes down to it, you need your number nine to bag the chances he should bag. Does anyone think Jota is failing to get a boot on that back post tap in?

I’d sell him in January if the right player was available. Definitely in the summer. He’ll have had three years and it’s just not working for him.

Until he goes, the best role for him is late sub against tired defenders. I would start Jota, Diaz and Salah as 9 ahead of him.

All in all, for the money it’s a disastrous signing. I have heard some gossip that he was very much Klopp’s signing, and was recruited on the basis of a freakish 6 month run against xG in Portugal when everything he hit went in. There were people in the analytics team advising against it, and warning of a reversion to mean.

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The stats don’t show that he is a great player, to be a great player he needs to perform at his job and his job is to score goals. As the other parts of his game he is lacking.

I am probably the most vocal in regards to Mo and giving away possession easily, I even commented in this game how he had given the ball away easily 3 times in the 1st half, but Salah gets some slack because he is producing the goods.

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Salah doesn’t like playing as a striker so that’s a no-go, but yeah, if we’re all fit, we do have options for the remainder of this season at least. Nunez is useful while he’s here, just not good enough to be more important and that will have it’s patience limit.

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Such as having returned to pre-season much later?

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Arne’s own words, that it’s rather surprising for him to be able to play as much as he did.

I very much agree with this, but

I disagree, because it’s also a function of the players they had around them. It’s far easier to look good when you have a worse team around you, simply because you’re a level above. Look ironically at Núñez at Benfica for example.

No you’re not, but that’s precisely my point, it’s a prevailing narrative, and I’m not saying it came out of nowhere, because he hasn’t had that breakthrough spell that other players have had, just little performances here and there.

Every player has their price. It should be blindingly obvious by now, what with all the going-ons with the contract negotiations.

I’m wondering if that’s not again the narrative that’s dictating this perception rather than the other way around. He didn’t even play that much. You can argue it’s because he didn’t perform well enough, but no one did in that period. Even Salah was underperforming. These are literal double standards.

Yes, and so if the club decides to persist with him, there’s obviously the decision that he is worth it. After all, the people who brought him in are no longer with the club anymore, he’s not anyone’s pet project in that sense. Like every other player, he will sink or swim on his own merits.

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A physical beast, not so sure, he doesn’t win many headers and he is far from having technical ability as he loses possession too often, lacks a great 1st touch, finishes erratically and isn’t the best passer

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And apart from this season, he has not performed worse than Mané and Firmino bar their absolute peak seasons or two when you weigh it by game time.

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Mané’s goals, assists, and combined per 90 for each of his seasons with us.

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Firmino’s goals, assists, and combined per 90 for each of his seasons with us.

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Núñez’s goals, assists, and combined per 90 for each of his seasons with us.

He is literally producing those actual goal contribution numbers on the same levels as those two.

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I think to be precise what Graham said was that analytics people weren’t advising against it per se, they were advising that he’s a great player but we would have to reconfigure our entire team to fit him.

Nothing about a reversion to the mean.

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Unfortunately stats don’t tell the whole story, no one apart from you would take Nunez over Mane or Firmino.

Also last season, Liverpool were a gung ho team, we will score more than you, and were very offensive in the style of play.

Comparing Nunez against Bobby, is a non starter, just listen to what the players and Klopp say about Bobby and the same goes for Sadio.

We all hoped Nunez would come good because his athleticism gets him into good positions and his XG has been promising but he has underperformed his XG and that is the crux of it, he misses too many good chances.

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He’s been at the club since 2022, we’re not talking about a specific period here and there, which we also can if you want.

I’m talking about his entire time here, not only for a period when for example comeones comes back a bit later and we have these first 3 league fixures before the first international break when managers, if they make a good start, don’t like to change too much.

Is it? Far easier to look good when you have a worse team around you, or when you have a better team around you? Or is it even that black or white?

These players and even others, came in and if they didn’t impress on all cylinders from the first day at the club, there was no doubt they were going to be important. And they were regular starters, in diffent positions and shapes. Nunez wasn’t and still isn’t. For reasons of quality.

Tell me about Nunez at Benfica, other than xG stats. I didn’t watch them regularly at that time, so I don’t know enough, other than scoring more in his second than his first season. How did he do there and with what kind of quality around him?

Nunez has played quite a bit of football in his time here, but why hasn’t he nailed down that position as a starter? Other than the obvious rotation and inability to play 90 minutes for 15 games or whatever, it’s obvious. He wasn’t showing enough to merit it. Question of quality.

To say nobody performed in his time here and trying to level everyone with Nunez is simply untrue. And please let’s not compare even an at times underperforming Salah with Nunez.

Persisting and giving him some time, while also not getting the right market interest/offers can be different. Are we magically getting good enough offers for him and we don’t know anything about it? There’s always a chance, but I highly doubt it.

What was there to persist against? Or is it simply being a bit stuck with him (fee, wages, years of contract), using the fact that he’s at least useful, trying to make him/the attack better before giving up, accepting an offer/loss and move on.

If he gets 3 or 4 seasons here without serious improvement of his level so far in his entire time at the club, he can be bloody happy at the chance he got at Liverpool.

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I didn’t say I would take one over the other, primarily because I don’t deal with hypotheticals like that.

But you’re also proving my point, that what people are slagging him off for is completely disproportionate to what is actually happening on the pitch.

And 2017-18 and prior seasons weren’t?

In any case, I wasn’t even arguing about last season’s numbers. I was looking at his first season. Firmino only outperformed that half the time he was here, and for Mané, that’s 2 seasons and one season roughly on par with that. The latter’s best season in goal-contributions was 2018-19, which was still really attacking, and yet also had fewer goals scored.

That’s also part of my point. He’s underperforming, and yet he’s already contributing what the other two did in goals/assists, and people are slagging him off for that. I can give Firmino in terms of link-up play, since I haven’t looked into what metrics might measure that, but Mané?

My whole point has been that people are overromanticising the past, and also underrating Núñez because he’s so damn frustrating, while missing that he’s actually already delivering decent numbers, and if he had come in at £15m as a promising young forward, the fume would be much less.

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Also remember Mane played from the left and Bobby was a 9 and half, completely different positions, just look at how Darwin is struggling even more this season, trying to play the Bobby role.

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He’s not even asked to play like Bobby and the shape change this season asks him to be our proper #9. It was a good discussion how good of a move was it even at the time, when we were getting him. A lot of us couldn’t tell because few of us watch Benfica regularly. And to buy from these sort of leagues, sometimes the jump is too much for some players. Point is, circumstances have been mostly positive for him to do better than he did so far. And we can’t wait forever.

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Noone’s slagging him off. Everyone loves him and wants him to do well. But seriously mate, just watch the games. Cherry picking stats will lead you to ridiculous comparisons with Mane, Bobby and Mo

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Reinforcements that we needed in the summer are needed in Jan if we want to win the league, that much is glaringly obvious. Time to back the man and show how serious we are because you can bet your arse Arsenal and City will be spending at least 100m next month.

Hoping we can churn out results with a depleted, injury prone squad is far too risky, we know this to be true from recent experience. Let’s not let history repeat itself, shall we.

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He’s a brilliant player. The sort you see in average teams that are head and shoulders above the rest and you know he’d reach much higher levels with better players around him.

I think it’s wishful thinking though. He’s 25 and entering his prime. They’ll be after £100m+ for him

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Unfortunate thing for Nunez beyond the inconsistencies, the lack of composure to pick the right pass or choose the right decision and despite his great attitude, seem detached from the team play at times, is also the fact that most of our purchases above the 50m mark had been successes (with exception of Keita who was destroyed by injuries), so there is an extra desperation for us to see him justify his price tag. Not going to excuse him but if he had come to us on a free transfer, alot more people will call him a great squad option to have, and he is looking at his attitude and willingness to run his socks off. But realistically he is not, he is expected to succeed and fulfil the potential that made us splash those cash. It’s fair to say he has not so far and it doesn’t surprise me if there is someone offering us something at the 30m-40m mark, we will consider it.

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Apart from Salah and van Dijk, which other outfield players have really “nailed down their positions”? We’ve always rotated players as much as we could.

I think the former tends to be the case implied when people talk about being able to continue shining moving to a better team, isn’t it? I agree that it isn’t very black and white.

They came into different contexts, as I keep pointing out. Salah, Mané and Firmino came into the context of a team for which the expectation was to compete for Champions League spots at best, for which we only really saw the ascendancy later on. Jota came into a team which was competing for the title, but he hasn’t exactly nailed down a starting spot either, and not from want for trying. I think it’s forgotten quite easily how inconsistent he is at times too, and how anonymous he can be when he’s not scoring.

I don’t know anything about his time at Benfica either, except that like Mascot implies, he was underperforming his xG for most of it (it’s notable though that this season is different, but I suspect it’s also largely because his xG hasn’t been the best).

Except I didn’t claim the former, and again, the latter comparison is valid even if you don’t want to admit it. Salah and Núñez essentially have the same role – score and assist. One just has a longer track record of doing so.

I’m not sure what the point you’re making here is. My point was simply that if the club hasn’t decided to bring in new players in that position/role, then it’s a decent suggestion that at the very least, they see him as a serviceable option. They don’t need to sell him to do that. That they haven’t done so however, is at least an indication that they see him as the main option.

I think once again, it neglects the context here to suggest it’s only about how much time he got here. It’s like saying that Sturridge got 4 seasons at (a title-winning no less) Chelsea, and yet failed to make it there, even being loaned out, therefore he’s not going to shine as a player.

As I think you pointed out earlier, different players have different progressions. If he can find that consistency, he will explode into a world-beater. He just doesn’t look likely to find it on the basis of this season so far, but that neglects the improvements he’s made in other areas, not to mention the improvements he made last season.

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Salah plays from the right too, but that doesn’t stop him, and in fact it often tends to be more beneficial since they get to run into space whereas he has to create space with his own movement.

Did Núñez’s role under Jürgen really differ that much from Firmino’s role in the end? I remember we attempted some shape changes at the start of the season he came in, but that was mainly-related to Salah, was it not?

I genuinely don’t know how much of it is a role change, especially given @Zoran’s remarks. He hasn’t been too ineffective there, although it’s dampened his numbers.

Have they really been all that positive? Coming into a team disrupted by injuries and fading midfield players, before doing better in a second season (which was again derailed by injuries). Even the rest of our forwards haven’t done that well in the past couple of seasons, and again I stress, it’s not that I’m throwing shade at them, but I’m more drawing the comparison as to the circumstances, and how he seems to be singled out for the criticism he gets.

Jota is 3 years older, has been with us for far longer, and yet it’s easier to forget how inconsistent he is simply because he just has been injured so often we can barely remember what it’s like for him to get a sustained run in the team.

Díaz’ goalscoring form this season is remarkable precisely because he hadn’t had that level of goalscoring in previous seasons, and he’s 2 years older than Núñez, and again, has been with us for longer.

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My apologies for poor phrasing. I’m talking specifically with regards to the criticism of his finishing, which despite the chances he misses, does let him score quite a good few.

I do watch the games. I’m just more than mildly irritated by how people have their favourites and will have double standards.

I don’t even think that highly of Núñez, that’s the only thing that I’m being contorted into. I think he’s a player whose current level is not where it could be, but it’s at worst a squad rotation player level. I do think that when Jota is fit again, and he gets a run of games, people will start to miss Núñez and romanticise what he offers.

I’m really just against overreactions, suggesting that he’s not going to improve, that we should move him on, when he’s precisely at the kind of age when most players actually start to shine/peak. One would think given all the talk that he was at least a couple of years older than he actually is.

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