Liverpool have been warned they may have made the same mistake as Chelsea did with Timo Werner by signing Darwin Nunez last summer after a difficult first season in the Premier League. The Uruguayan arrived in a £85million transfer from Benfica, a club-record deal, but has been used predominantly on the left side of the front three by Jurgen Klopp after struggling to adapt to the physical nature of the Premier League.
Nunez struck 15 goals in all competitions in his first season at Anfield, with nine goals and three assists coming from 29 Premier League appearances. But the 24-year-old found it difficult to convert golden chances when presented with them inside the box, forcing Klopp to jump to his defence as critics began to get on his back.
Nunez’s pace and power should mean that he is able to improve his statistics once he has fully adjusted to life in England, although some players of a similar profile opted to leave. In the case of Werner, he struck only 23 goals in 89 games for Chelsea after a £47.5m switch from RB Leipzig – and returned to the German club two years later for just £25m.
Former striker Cascarino believes Nunez has the same look as Werner and Fernando Torres did when they rocked up at Chelsea, comparing the goal-shy pair to the Uruguayan frontman after they struggled at Stamford Bridge.
And the ex-Ireland striker, 65, is unsure whether Nunez will be a success.
“Klopp has seen a lot of attack-minded players come in in the last year or so. But Nunez, I just don’t know,” Cascarino said on talkSPORT.
“He’s had a whole year at Anfield and it’s not worked out. He’s had a disappointing year, it looks like to me he’s going to be a Torres or a Timo Werner. He’s not going to convert the amount of chances he gets.”
Klopp signed Cody Gakpo in January and the Dutchman has been preferred through the middle, with Nunez on the left while Luis Diaz has been out injured. Now that the Colombian is back to full fitness, the German boss faces a dilemma as to which players to start in his front three, with Diogo Jota and Mohamed Salah also to fit in.
But it is clear the 55-year-old trusts Nunez will eventually come good and silence his doubters after claiming he would have scored 20 goals or more last season had it not been for the team’s struggle for form.
“For him to have scored 15 goals anyway, imagine if by our standards a good season with 70 or 80 points, he would have scored 20-odd goals definitely,” he said in April. “Mo Salah at his best season — 40-odd goals — missed chances. That’s normal. Erling Haaland missed chances.
“That’s how it is but they had much more that we created in this period. But 15 goals is still absolutely fine and three games to go so possibly increase that number as well.
“We spoke about it. He needs time to adapt. He had that at Benfica as well, but there wasn’t the language issue, or less of a language issue than there was here. It’s clear that we will try to help him and he can help us even more than he has done already.”
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