Darwin Nunez has only been at the club for a week, but many people outside of Liverpool (at least on social media) have already labeled him a disaster.
Those words will not reach the 23-year-old Uruguayan, and they are an indictment of the pernicious nature of social media in today’s world.
Since NASA has recently been taking us further and further back in time, closer to the inception of our planet, it’s safe to say that Nunez’s Liverpool career is still in its early stages, with no material, and the big bang has yet to begin. But the conditions are ripe, and his form will erupt sooner or later.
His first few days at the club were a flurry of activity, with him traveling from Thailand to Singapore and having to participate in open training sessions open to the public rather than more intimate behind closed doors sessions that would have provided more of an opportunity for integration.
Nunez has played just over 60 minutes of football — not even a full-length football game — and while he will be disappointed with the chances he has missed thus far, he is confident of converting them in the future.
Liverpool will be encouraged that he is getting opportunities. It would be much more concerning if Nunez wasn’t even showing up in the right places, but the fact that he has an xG total of over one in just 60 minutes of football suggests he will be clinical when he gets going.
Liverpool will have a goalscoring phenomenon if he replicates his output from his Benfica days, where he outperformed his xG by 12.5 last season, with a total of 18.5 xG from his 31 goals according to Wyscout.
Nunez’s early days at Liverpool are reminiscent of Fernando Torres‘ debut in a red shirt against Werder Bremen in a pre-season friendly. Torres, like Nunez, was lively in the game but at times floundered on the pitch and missed numerous chances in front of goal.
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