Darwin Nunez - Thoughts?

[Ne Moe Imya]

15 hours ago, Bjornebye said:

I swear some of you watch a different game. First half against Arsenal he was arguably the best player on the pitch with Diaz. Second half he got fuck all service. 

 

Last night he wasn't 'great' but he scored and we won 7:1. 

 

Mark my words, this lad will be the gear. He already is and he's only going to get better. Fucking slate other players who are only starting to turn up this year. 

This is basically it.

 

He's at 0.8 xG/90 in the toughest league in the world with like 6 shots/game! No, he's not a great passer but he's going to score 25 a season so who cares.

[Bjornebye]

18 minutes ago, Ne Moe Imya said:

This is basically it.

 

He's at 0.8 xG/90 in the toughest league in the world with like 6 shots/game! No, he's not a great passer but he's going to score 25 a season so who cares.

I'm going to sound like a fogey here but I have no idea what that means and I have zero desire to ever be told. 

 

But yep, he's boss. Only a fan who has never played football or seen proper football would disagree. 

[Lee909]

Nunez isn't a target man. Stop using him like one 

[lebron]

3 hours ago, Ne Moe Imya said:

This is basically it.

 

He's at 0.8 xG/90 in the toughest league in the world with like 6 shots/game! No, he's not a great passer but he's going to score 25 a season so who cares.

I do, and so should others… If those 25 a season leads to us as a team scoring less and giving more goals away… His lack of technique and pressing will be a problem for us against better teams (like it was 2nd half against Arsenal- not helped by the midfield has to be said). I think the bigger issue is that we’ve reverted to a bastardised shape to get him into the team. 

[etho]

None of that is his fault, he's a different type of player and we need to evolve. If we were ticking well it would be a beautiful thing, we'd have so many ways to crack a nut, with him Bobby and Jota all able to bring different things to the side. I'm sure he can play just fine in a 4-3-3. 

Problem is as well all know the midfield has fallen apart without reinforcements, so our press is broken, and that's probably the biggest factor in our becoming easy to play against and leaking goals.

[Dave D]

4 hours ago, Bjornebye said:

I'm going to sound like a fogey here but I have no idea what that means and I have zero desire to ever be told. 

 

But yep, he's boss. Only a fan who has never played football or seen proper football would disagree. 

Joachim Andersen will vouch for that no doubt.

 

[bossy]

He’s not our problem. Conceding goals is our problem.

[Joey8FrogsLegs]

2 hours ago, lebron said:

I do, and so should others… If those 25 a season leads to us as a team scoring less and giving more goals away… His lack of technique and pressing will be a problem for us against better teams (like it was 2nd half against Arsenal- not helped by the midfield has to be said). I think the bigger issue is that we’ve reverted to a bastardised shape to get him into the team. 

Very good post this, as opposed to the clueless ones from a few others casually labelling him ‘shite’.

 

He clearly isn’t ‘shite’, and I also believe his technical abilities isn’t the most burning question. His ability to do his part of the pressing however is. The pressing is key to both attack and defence the way we set up to play. In fact it is starting to be for most top teams these days.

 

If you look at Ibrahimović and Ronaldo (after he returned) at United both scored plenty of goals, but I reckon neither of them improved the mediocre team they joined.

 

I see a big potential in Nunez, but as long as we play the way we do he needs to learn to do his part of the pressing. Which I suspect Klopp and his team will make him do.

[VladimirIlyich]

7 hours ago, Bjornebye said:

I'm going to sound like a fogey here but I have no idea what that means and I have zero desire to ever be told. 

 

But yep, he's boss. Only a fan who has never played football or seen proper football would disagree. 

Its 'expected goals over 90 minutes,I believe? Which is far too simplistic a lot of the time.

[Barrington Womble]

4 hours ago, lebron said:

I do, and so should others… If those 25 a season leads to us as a team scoring less and giving more goals away… His lack of technique and pressing will be a problem for us against better teams (like it was 2nd half against Arsenal- not helped by the midfield has to be said). I think the bigger issue is that we’ve reverted to a bastardised shape to get him into the team. 

Our form this season has been poor with or without him. Fulham we were losing till he came on. Our 2 worst and defensively poor performances of the season we're at Manchester United where he didn't play and Napoli, where they'd scored all 4 by the time he came on. I think you could probably throw brighton into that where he got to come on after we shat the bed for the 3rd time. We haven't changed our shape to get him in the side, our shape has been evolving for a while, since Jota arrived and even moreso since Diaz arrived. We've made a big leap a couple of weeks ago because the midfield was failing, if the midfield functioned, there'd be no need for the change we've done - which incidentally was a reaction to Brighton . A forward who's scoring at a decent rate at a difficult start is the least of our problems. 2 years of neglect of our midfield and the lack of form of some key players to compound that is far more of a problem. 

 

For me this whole Darwin debate and blame him and missing mane (I know you don't mention him, but many do) is just simple populist words to a complex problem caused in part by a clear hangover from last season, lack of form to key players, squad management failure in midfield and lots of predictable injuries in that field.

[Ne Moe Imya]

On 14/10/2022 at 06:41, VladimirIlyich said:

Its 'expected goals over 90 minutes,I believe? Which is far too simplistic a lot of the time.

I agree, the important thing is the team's expected goals, but to put it in an old-school way, sometimes one player is so good at putting the ball in the goal that you can overlook any other weaknesses he has.

 

If a player scores you 25+ goals in all competitions per season, then he gets in the team, simple as. Would you prefer him to be a brilliant passer and also get 12 assists and press like mad? Yes, of course. But even if he doesn't, unless he utterly destroys the way the rest of the team plays, if he scores that many goals, he's an extremely valuable player and you're going to have him in the team.

 

Now, obviously he hasn't scored that many so far for us, but the xG thing shows us that he's getting into the right kinds of positions and creating the right kinds of shots, and finishing is variable and will inevitably regress to the mean. Remember that first Suarez season where he hit the bar 10 times or so? That's what's happening to Nunez right now - a finishing slump that is statistically unlikely to repeat itself. When he starts to score 7 or 8 goals in every 10 games, no one is going to say that he's the problem in our squad.

[johnsusername]

Benched for the biggest game of the season.

[Jhinge Machha]

absolutely terrible not to pass to salah there but there are glimpses with him.

 

just hope he gets composure at some point

[johnsusername]

He's a bull in a china shop, for better and for worse. 

[A_S]

1 minute ago, Jhinge Machha said:

absolutely terrible not to pass to salah there but there are glimpses with him.

 

just hope he gets composure at some point

I wonder if Jota was blocking that pass and running too close to the defender. Just got in the way there. 

[joe_fishfish]

That attempted dink at the end there, fucking hell. Fucking hell.

[Bobby Hundreds]

He's more raw than a Jeffrey Dahmer packed lunch he just needs more composure.

[johnsusername]

2 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

He's more raw than a Jeffrey Dahmer packed lunch he just needs more composure.

The thing is, from what I saw of him at Benfica (admittedly not loads) I thought his composure was what we were getting - he looked deadly! There have been times this season he's looked like he's playing five a side at the Pitz on a Monday night. 

[LFC 6 Times]

Really poor, you have to be more decisive in the big moments. Could really have cost us.

[sir roger]

6 minutes ago, joe_fishfish said:

That attempted dink at the end there, fucking hell. Fucking hell.

He was about 5 yards off.

[FrenchEyeGlass]

That game was absolutely set up for him. Some really powerful, if totally aimless, running at their defence but I have to be honest...his decision making, shooting and passing was fucking shite.

 

I felt like the Andy Carrol shouts were lazy as fuck but his performance to was genuinely Carrol-esque.

[FrenchEyeGlass]

Just now, sir roger said:

He was about 5 yards off.

Which has also become a theme for him.

[joe_fishfish]

1 minute ago, sir roger said:

He was about 5 yards off.

Yeah, I wasn't expecting it to stand if it had gone in, but I also wasn't expecting the attempt to be THAT bad. I've seen better execution at Sunday League level.

[ZonkoVille77]

No more excuses for him. We've all witnessed what he's capable of from his performances so far. What we've seen from his all round play so far has been atrocious. Not trying to be hard on the lad but he's not helping himself. He could have had 2 assists tonight. Instead he has us comparing him to Andy Carroll or Balotelli. Signing him has been a mistake, shit happens. 

[Dave D]

We beat an astonishingly good City without needing our £65m man.

 

Absolutely wanted him on with 20 mins to go to smash them.

 

In reality he was less effective than Origi