Ex-player Darwin Nunez

Sorry but I have to call you out on this. Darwin is nothing like Jordan. Jordan was instrumental in our 13-14 almost season and we likely would have won it if he didn’t miss the Chelsea and Palace games.
At no point was Jordan ever questioned mentally and, stupid as his Saudi move was, he never appeared to lack brains (in a football sense) in a way that Darwin does. Running around like a headless chicken some of time does not a good attitude make.

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Depends how you see football, I guess; an hegemony of bad actors, or Darwin. I know which I prefer, and it’s fuck all to do with a silly little trophy.

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If this guy was at the helm of the Titanic, thousands of lives would’ve been saved :shaking_face:

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I don’t think the Titanic actively went out to hit an iceberg.

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Yeah if anything I’d say the joke works the other way. He must have been at the helm of the Titanic because anywhere else would have been fine, but the Titanic hit it directly at the goalkeeper, as it were.

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Well it sort of it didn’t it swerved.

If it had hit it straight on it’s likely many more lives would have been saved and it May even have been able to stay afloat and make New York.

Anyhow Nunez

:joy:

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I mean I guess it sort of works because it’s not as though Núñez shoots directly at the goalkeeper on purpose either…

I remember so many of his misses in the first two seasons were either woodwork or just some really good goalkeeping.

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I have to say his finishing is a puzzle. I don’t actually think it’s a bad signing from the metric point of view.

Though potentially there was something we missed at Benfica.

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His conversion rate (and Jota"s) is around 13%. Salah and Isaak are i think around 45 - 50%. That’s a substantial difference.

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I said from a Metric point of view.

What was his finishing at Benfica if it was those numbers then it’s poor signing. As for Jota it’s been a lot better at times.

We didn’t sign him on this form and if we did someone fucked up, it’s also why I am wary of signing one season types we often see a clamber for on here.

Nowhere near, I’m afraid:

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I know. Conversion rate is a metric.

Thanks for correcting me. Not sure where i got the earlier figures from.

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That’s a fascinating list. Jota (0.14) isn’t even on there.

I wonder if Díaz’s numbers will see a significant difference depending on where he’s playing. If so, I’d suggest then that perhaps leading the line for us is just inevitably going to see worse chances.

For the record, Jota’s Liverpool average is 0.186, Núñez’s is 0.113. Firmino is on 0.138 for the seasons for which FBref has recorded shots. Salah’s is 0.139.

Isak’s Newcastle average is 0.218. Haaland 0.207 for City.

I do wonder though, if you put Isak and Haaland in our team, whether they’d see as good an average as they currently have.

I would expect Isak to match if not better his average. He has been a consistent finisher across his career, and we create a lot of chances.

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We create a lot of chances yes, but the quality of the chances? I think we play rather differently to Newcastle, no?

I said from Benfica

We didn’t fucking sign him based on this years strike rate did we?

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We certainly didn’t sign him on the basis of one aspect of his game, which was also coming from a weaker league.

Yeah, I recall that the season before we signed him he had a golden patch where his strike rate was way up and he was far exceeding his xG numbers. There was a good amount of concern that we were being tricked into spending big money because of what was surely an unsustainable period of overperformance. The data guys though were reported to have insisted the more complex underlying data they were primarily interested in was relatively stable across his time at Benfica and so the temporarily elevated strike rate was just a bonus and not what was driving our decision.

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