Boasting 15 goals from his first season in English football, Liverpool fans will be in agreement that Darwin Nunez has had a promising start at Anfield.
Despite criticism from rival fans, the Uruguayan has emerged as a firm fan-favourite since joining from Benfica for an initial £64m last summer. Although still raw, the 23-year-old’s goal return is respectable with confidence that there is plenty more to come.
Jurgen Klopp has repeatedly insisted Nunez is a ‘long-term project’. And should the striker push on as expected, the add-ons included in his Anfield switch will take his overall fee to £85m and see him replace Virgil van Dijk as the club’s record signing.
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Yet, there can be no denying that the final couple months of the campaign have not gone to place for Nunez since the March international break. A toe injury ruled him out of the 3-0 win away at Leicester City and 1-1 home draw with Aston Villa earlier this month, while he started just three of the Reds’ nine matches prior to that lay-off.
Back from injury, Diogo Jota and Luis Diaz would both start at his expense as Liverpool put together a 10-game unbeaten run to almost rescue their Champions League qualification hopes. During that spell, Nunez would score just once. His brace in the devastating 7-0 victory over Manchester United in mid-March, forming an electric front three with Mohamed Salah and Cody Gakpo, now seems so long ago.
The Uruguayan did at least return to training this week and will hope to feature on the final day of the season away at Southampton and finish his season strongly.
Prior to Nunez’s toe injury, which was among several minor knocks that blighted his campaign, Klopp had hinted why the striker suddenly found himself out of Liverpool’s starting XI.
“Darwin is a player with a different skillset to all our other players. That’s good, that’s good,” Klopp told reporters last month. “He’s a real handful, he’s a machine, and he will score a lot of goals.
“He’s scored already a decent number of goals. That’s all fine but yes, of course, he is still adapting. His English is still not great, if existing at all. We are working on that massively.
“He has to learn English, that’s how it is. We can translate everything, but in training sessions we cannot have four languages and translate it. It’s a football language so it will help him massively.
“It’s not helpful to go through a difficult debut season for the whole team. How can a striker shine when the whole team is struggling? That’s not possible but he had super moments for us, absolutely. But was injured in some moments, suspended in other moments. That’s not helpful but it’s no problem at all.
“This is a long-term project. I understand that he wants to play desperately from the beginning. That’s all fine. But we have to find for us a way that it works really for us again.”
Ultimately, Liverpool’s return to form coincided with playing forwards who are both more familiar with the Reds’ playing style and Klopp’s demands. While Nunez’s niggling injuries have held him back at times, so too has his lack of understanding of English.
This is perhaps demonstrated best by the sight of Thiago Alcantara, who was not even in Liverpool’s matchday squad, translating instructions into Spanish for Nunez on the sidelines ahead of his introduction in the 4-3 victory over Tottenham Hotspur. Considering it was the Uruguayan who lost Richarlison for Spurs’ late equaliser, you can’t help but wonder the limit of his understanding.
Of course, in the long-term the Reds don’t need to be concerned. Nunez has publicly compared this season to his previous first-year struggles at Benfica before he exploded into life with a 34-goal campaign that earned him a move to Anfield in the first place.
In time, his English will improve and he will grow more accustomed to Klopp’s demands and Liverpool’s playing style. Yet, there is a similarity to one other big-money Reds signing that may become a concern - Naby Keita.
The Guinean joined Liverpool for £52.75m in the summer of 2018, 12 months on from a deal being struck with RB Leipzig. At the time of that initial agreement, it was a club-record signing.
Keita has won every major honour during his time at Anfield, but will leave at the end of his contract this summer. Ultimately, his five years on Merseyside were plagued by similar issues over his physicality amid injury woes, plus grasp of the English language.
When looking back over the midfielder’s Anfield career, The Athletic reported how it took a long time for the midfielder to come out of his shell at Liverpool, with the language barrier said to be a ‘recurring problem’.
They would claim: “In early 2020, Mane was having breakfast with Keita at Melwood when one of the staff came over to inform the midfielder they were going to step up his rehab that morning with a light jog around the training field. Much to Mane’s amusement, Keita replied: 'Yeah, yeah, I like eggs.'
“There was another occasion when medical staff were chasing up scan results only to learn that he hadn’t been scanned at all after misunderstanding the instructions he had been given. A staff member returned to the private hospital with him.
“There’s a sense that he could have been more proactive in terms of making that process easier, especially when it came to learning English.”
Meanwhile, the same report also pointed to Keita’s lack of durability at Anfield. The midfielder himself is said to have admitted he struggled with the greater intensity and physicality, in both training and matches, with the club ‘leaving no stone unturned’ in a bid to solve such injury headaches.
“Yoga, dietary changes and tweaking his training plan all had some impact on trying to reduce his soft-tissue muscle problems,” reports The Athletic. “Andreas Schlumberger, the club’s head of recovery and performance, worked closely with Keita following the former’s arrival from Schalke midway through the 2020-21 season.
“Injury issues kept him sidelined for longer than had initially been anticipated. There was a sense that so many setbacks damaged his confidence to really push himself.”
Given Liverpool will wave off the Guinean at the end of his contract this summer, with the Reds ultimately never seeing the ‘real’ Naby Keita, perhaps that partly explains Klopp’s sterner frustrations with Nunez in fear of history potentially repeating itself.
At a time when Keita should be at the peak of his powers, he leaves Anfield on a free transfer having never made centre stage his own. He is the only major Klopp signing to depart leaving a sense of unfulfillment, having not offered a significant return on Liverpool’s hefty investment.
The Reds will be desperate to ensure Nunez doesn’t join the Guinean on the shortest of lists, looking to help the Uruguayan prosper where Keita fell short. Improving his understanding of English during the summer break would be a start.
Liverpool have learned their lessons and you can understand why Klopp is demanding more from Nunez behind-the-scenes as a result. The striker could become the Reds’ record signing, but he has to learn from Keita’s missteps first.
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