Jurgen Klopp says there's "a lot more to come" from Darwin Nunez next season as the Liverpool boss challenged the striker to end his maiden season in the Premier League strongly.
Nunez, has scored 15 goals across all competitions since joining from Benfica for an initial £64m sum last June, with nine of those coming in the league.
The Uruguay international, though, has found himself used as a substitute more often of late, starting just three of the last nine games since the last international break.
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Reds boss Klopp has tended to favour Cody Gakpo, Diogo Jota and Luis Diaz, who recently returned after six months on the sidelines with a serious knee injury, alongside 30-goal top-scorer Mohamed Salah up top.
Klopp says Nunez still needs time to settle properly in English football and feels his numbers have been impacted by his arrival into a team that has generally struggled for much of the campaign following their exertions last term.
“There's a lot more to come," he said of the forward. "That's clear. He needs time to settle. The most difficult thing for a striker is to come into a team that is not clicking.
"Imagine if he played for us in a good season, an 80-point or more season, he would have scored more goals, definitely. But it is like now each situation we created and we miss it and it is a more high level.
"Mo Salah, in his best season when he scored 40-odd goals, missed chances. That's normal. Erling Haaland [has] missed chances. But they had much more than we created in this period. Fifteen goals is absolutely fine.
"There are still three games to go so possibly he can increase that number as well. He had time to adapt at Benfica and there was no language issue, or less than it is here. We tried to help him so he can help us even more than he did already."
Klopp also talked up the importance of personal discussions with the Reds' transfer targets this summer with a major midfield rebuild anticipated in the upcoming window.
Brighton's Alexis Mac Allister has been earmarked as Klopp's primary target with interest also in Chelsea's Mason Mount. Bayern Munich's Netherlands international, Ryan Gravenberch, is another believed to be under consideration.
Klopp feels that any talks with prospective targets remain vital to ensuring Liverpool continue what has largely been a successful track record of recruitment across much of the last five years.
He added: "You can't speak early, you have to wait to get permission. In Germany I could talk pretty early to players - the good old times. Here I can't. It would be really cool to get a picture and we can obviously watch the players as often as we want but then all the other restrictions are coming in. Someone tells me I can go and then I go. That's the rules. Nothing else.
"It always was [key to talk], because when I talk I've seen him playing already so my opinion about him is already clear. That's why these talks are important, you just need to know where he stands, what he wants to achieve, what he wants to do, how is he.
"In football for me it is quite simple, you can make an 80% picture when you just watch him play, how they behave in certain moments, dealing with set-backs.
"That is not a conversation about the person, the boy behind the player, the family. That's more difficult here. Maybe now all the German guys go, 'it was not allowed in Germany as well', but no-one asked. I never had a situation when someone said: 'You cannot talk to him.'"
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