Darwin Nunez - Thoughts?

[Bob]

30 minutes ago, TheRedMachine said:

Bobby wouldn't have missed though. So there's that.

Or looked.

[Fallen Angel]

2 hours ago, dave u said:

It's so obvious what the problem is. When he gets a normal or even difficult chance he's thinking about scoring. When it's a tap-in it's the fear of missing that takes over. All of this in in his head. The question for Klopp is whether to do something about it (sports psychologist for example) or if the better approach is to not make it bigger than it is and just let him play his way through it. When he scores a couple of tap ins he might then relax when he gets them.

 

Anyone who plays golf knows how that feels. You miss a couple of short putts and it seems like the hardest thing in the world to do when it should be the easiest. You'd rather have an eight footer than a two footer because you're more freed up and relaxed mentally. You're tying to make it rather than to not miss, because if you don't make the eight footer its fine, it isn't embarrassing, shit happens. You miss the two footer though and it's fucking horrible.

 

That's what is happening with Nunez. When he's got a sitter he's tensing up because of the "don't fuck this up" factor.

He has stop missing sitters - that’s it. Strikers score - Nunez fluffs his lines over and over. Has a good run from the bench - clamoring for him to start begins - he gets a run of games and his form sends him back to the bench - rinse and repeat. He’s 25 in June - hardly a kid learning his trade. Time to show up or Villa awaits 

[TheHowieLama]

Salah wouldn't have "passed" to either Mane or Firmino.

[Code]

28 minutes ago, TheHowieLama said:

Salah wouldn't have "passed" to either Mane or Firmino.

 

Imagine how many assists Salah could and should have had if his strike partners were even half decent.

[JohnnyH]

3 hours ago, Code said:

 

 

Did anyone ask Salah about it?

 

I did.  But he said "Who the fuck are you" and ran away.

[VERBAL DIARRHEA]

1 hour ago, Code said:

 

Imagine how many assists Salah could and should have had if his strike partners were even half decent.

Who would they be?

[dave u]

1 hour ago, Fallen Angel said:

He has stop missing sitters - that’s it. Strikers score - Nunez fluffs his lines over and over. Has a good run from the bench - clamoring for him to start begins - he gets a run of games and his form sends him back to the bench - rinse and repeat. He’s 25 in June - hardly a kid learning his trade. Time to show up or Villa awaits 

 

"His form sends him back to the bench". What form would that be then? The form that has him either scoring or assisting every 80 minutes or something? 

 

He does have to stop missing sitters, it's a big problem, but you're talking like that's all he's doing and you're ignoring the goals he's scoring and creating at a better rate than anybody else in the squad. He's playing great, even yesterday his performance was really good until that horrendous miss.

[dave u]

4 hours ago, TD_LFC said:

Difference being, in golf you're trying to hit something that's 4 and half inches in diameter and in football he's aiming at something that's 24ft x 8ft from 3-10 yards away.

 

From two feet away, not 3-10 yards. And a football is like 50 times the size of a golfball. Plus the golf ball isn't coming at me at pace, it's stationary. I stand by the comparison, its valid.

[dave u]

3 hours ago, 3 Stacks said:

Its not like golf though, because in golf you are over the ball for a long amount of time and you have the opportunity to think about a million things. The only comparable thing in football is a dead ball like a pen or a free kick. The chance he puts over yesterday, the whole thing, from the ball bouncing over to him and him making contact with it, takes about 2 seconds. Are we saying those 2 seconds are enough time for his brain to recognize its a sitter and then for his brain to freeze because he is supposedly scared of those?

 

And he literally scored a tap in against Forest last week. 

 

And he so very nearly missed it. Look how close that was to not going in! 

 

2 seconds is absolutely enough time for your body to tense up and balloon a chance. If you don't think these missed sitters are because of a mental block then how else are you explaining it? There are chances that are almost impossible for professional footballers to miss this regularly. It's in his head, no doubt about it.

[Megadrive Man]

My gut feeling is that Nunez is always likely to miss these sort of chances. If that chance falls to Jota or Gakpo, they definitely score it, but the flip side to that is that neither Jota or Gakpo score either let alone both of those goals that Nunez scores away at Newcastle. 

 

We saw towards the back end of last season that Klopp was clearly trying to get Nunez to change his game and it wasn't working.

This season Klopp has decided to embrace the chaos and it's largely working.

 

He's just one of those players where you have to take the rough with the smooth.

 

[Section_31]

I think this can be coached, certainly psychologically and with experience. If he scored tap ins but his general play was shit then it's a question of ability, but if his all round play is good and he's missing goals that I could score, then ability isn't the problem.

[JohnnyH]

16 minutes ago, dave u said:

 

"His form sends him back to the bench". What form would that be then? The form that has him either scoring or assisting every 80 minutes or something? 

 

He does have to stop missing sitters, it's a big problem, but you're talking like that's all he's doing and you're ignoring the goals he's scoring and creating at a better rate than anybody else in the squad. He's playing great, even yesterday his performance was really good until that horrendous miss.

 

This above is really important.  His misses are deeply concerning in the level and the quantity of them.  However, what he is also bringing to all the other parts of the game are massively important and in many cases, match winning.  So he still gets to play as he contributes so much, but he simply has to sort out the misses.  

 

And people posting Haalands miss against us, or Torres for Chelsea against the Mancs aren't the defence they think it is.  Nunez has had those in the last 2 weeks.   

 

7 minutes ago, dave u said:

 

And he so very nearly missed it. Look how close that was to not going in! 

 

 

I was worried I'd be called a Nunez hater if I pointed that out, when I'm not, but that literally hit the roof of the net from 2 yards.  It was so nearly another terrible miss.  

[TD_LFC]

11 minutes ago, dave u said:

If you don't think these missed sitters are because of a mental block then how else are you explaining it?

 

This isn't a short term thing though, he did it last season, he did it for Benfica and he's done it for Uruguay.

 

In fact it's frightening how similar the misses are (he did one almost identical to Luton last season).

 

So either no club has got a grip of it when they could have or it's more deep rooted.

 

This is just a brief video of 10 'misses' (I wouldn't put some of them down as bad misses personally, the 7th, and 5th for example, and the 6th looks like he get's pulled back) but the familiarity of the type of misses across different teams is staggering (8, 4, 3 and 2 in particular).

 

 

 

[Section_31]

Liverpool strikers always have to have a 'story', which tends to come from without. Media and rival fans. 

 

Fowler was a scal, the 'Toxteth terror'. Collymore was expensive and missed loads of sitters too. Owen was the golden boy and therefore too good for us, he was England's man. Suarez was a dirty, cheating, racist bitey animal. 

 

Nunez is the poor man's Halaand. See how we laugh as he crucifies Mancunian hopes and dreams, scores back heels and 30 yard screamers and pummels the toon and their big, wobbly, bitch tits. 

 

Nunez is just another story for halfwit commentators who don't have the insight to say anything interesting. 

 

Lineker, Shearer, Wright et al - they love Darwin. They love that shit.  

[Bob]

I don’t get this place. This is one of my best pieces of work and not a single rep in sight. 
 

fuck it, I’m doing a Stronts and repoing myself.

 

[TheBitch]

7 minutes ago, Bob said:

I don’t get this place. This is one of my best pieces of work and not a single rep in sight. 
 

fuck it, I’m doing a Stronts and repoing myself.

 

Repped. 

[Bobby Hundreds]

If he's got the ball at his feet and the timing is all his own he can strike it but when the ball is hit at him he can't judge it for shit. He's got volleyitis.

[3 Stacks]

40 minutes ago, dave u said:

 

And he so very nearly missed it. Look how close that was to not going in! 

 

2 seconds is absolutely enough time for your body to tense up and balloon a chance. If you don't think these missed sitters are because of a mental block then how else are you explaining it? There are chances that are almost impossible for professional footballers to miss this regularly. It's in his head, no doubt about it.

I mean, like anything it's probably a mix of things. Physical, technical, mental. How much of each variable is at fault is impossible to know.

 

To me, from what we've seen of him, he likes to hit the ball hard, he likes to try extravagant finishes, hit stuff on the volley.

 

But there seems to be a struggle with the basic stuff. He might just be too twitchy, explosive and wild with his movements and it can mess him up. A lot of times, he doesn't look like his body is in control. Like, the one against Toulouse where he rounds the keeper, he clearly is out of control and that's why he hits the post.

[liverpoolsno9]

He should have scored but Strikers miss chances all the time. The last few pages on here is evidence that he’s judged differently than other strikers. Other strikers miss chances & it hardly gets a mention, ‘he should have scored’ & move on. Nunez misses a chance & his ability is under question. He missed a chance, get over it. It happens. His overall game at the moment is worthy of him starting, his runs, his movement, his pace. Salah, on the other hand has been piss poor for weeks. But let’s pile on Nunez. 

[3 Stacks]

8 minutes ago, liverpoolsno9 said:

He should have scored but Strikers miss chances all the time. The last few pages on here is evidence that he’s judged differently than other strikers. Other strikers miss chances & it hardly gets a mention, ‘he should have scored’ & move on. Nunez misses a chance & his ability is under question. He missed a chance, get over it. It happens. His overall game at the moment is worthy of him starting, his runs, his movement, his pace. Salah, on the other hand has been piss poor for weeks. But let’s pile on Nunez. 

Salah's been piss poor for weeks?

 

Why are people inventing that other players have long been bad to excuse the fact Darwin is missing open goals?

[Babb'sBurstNad]

I have some sympathy for the one against Toulouse. Loads of top strikers round the keeper too far and then struggle to wrap their foot around the ball. It usually ends up in the side netting.

 

I think he was stuck in two minds against Luton. It looks like an empty net, but the keeper is diving across, and a defender is coming in. He's clearly trying to send it back and high. Terrible execution.

 

He's improved though, so I'm confident he'll keep improving. 

[TD_LFC]

31 minutes ago, liverpoolsno9 said:

He should have scored but Strikers miss chances all the time. The last few pages on here is evidence that he’s judged differently than other strikers. Other strikers miss chances & it hardly gets a mention, ‘he should have scored’ & move on. Nunez misses a chance & his ability is under question. He missed a chance, get over it. It happens. His overall game at the moment is worthy of him starting, his runs, his movement, his pace. Salah, on the other hand has been piss poor for weeks. But let’s pile on Nunez. 

 

If that had any truth to it he'd be being criticised for the chances he missed prior to that one, he's not though. 

 

He's getting judged no differently to any other striker who makes that kind of miss, the single difference is the frequency in which it happens..

 

As people have already pointed out Haaland has scored 60+ goals and still gets the charity shield miss wheeled out against him because of the type of miss it was.

 

 

 

 

[Dave D]

1 hour ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

If he's got the ball at his feet and the timing is all his own he can strike it but when the ball is hit at him he can't judge it for shit. He's got volleyitis.

 

This sums it perfectly. Its the judgement and adjusting his body when the ball is coming at him that he struggles with rather than when he has it under control. With the ball at his feet he can be sublime.

 

I guess that can be coached to some extent but for the top strikers that would be instinct at this stage of their career  

[liverpoolsno9]

21 minutes ago, 3 Stacks said:

Salah's been piss poor for weeks?

 

Why are people inventing that other players have long been bad to excuse the fact Darwin is missing open goals?

He has. Was was shite in the Derby, v Forest & yesterday. A pen & a couple of tap ins, courtesy of the Forest Keeper & Darwin doesn’t change the fact that, by his standards, he’s been shite. Maybe if Mo was his usual self, Nunez would bury the next chance & he wouldn’t be getting the criticism he has. Strikers miss chances. But Nunez seems to be judged more harshly than other striker in the game today.
I’m not having a go at Mo, he can have shit games, he’s deserved it, I’m having a go at the unfair criticism I’ve seen directed towards Nunez whilst other players were shite. Arguably, Nunez offered our biggest (only?) threat yesterday. He’d be pretty low down the list of players to be criticised after yesterday. 

[LFC 6 Times]

I’m fed up of hearing “strikers miss chances” line. Yes, of course they do. But they can’t miss fucking chances like yesterday. It’s one of the worst I’ve ever seen from a Liverpool player, you cannot defend that miss. It needs to be addressed and improved upon.