Former Liverpool record signing Stan Collymore believes Darwin Nunez needs to incorporate a “bit of nastiness” into his game to fully realise his potential at Anfield.
The Uruguayan striker joined the Reds in a club-record £85m transfer from Benfica in the summer of 2022.
Since his arrival, Darwin Nunez has experienced a turbulent spell at Liverpool, marked by inconsistency and fluctuating form.
The 25-year-old has registered 36 goals and 19 assists in 110 appearances for the club.
This season, he has managed three goals in 14 appearances, but only started featuring regularly under new head coach Arne Slot following an injury to Diogo Jota.
Collymore, an admirer of Nunez’s talent, recalls the striker’s fiery Anfield debut in August 2022, where he was sent off for headbutting Joachim Andersen.
Despite his erratic performances, Collymore is confident that Darwin Nunez has the ability to score goals consistently.
However, the former England international insists that the Uruguayan must come out of his shell to cement his place as Liverpool’s main attacking threat.
“I think that, particularly for strikers, it’s a big challenge at Liverpool,” he exclusively told Liverpool Echo, courtesy of NewBettingSites.uk. “If you think of all the strikers that Liverpool have had over many, many years, it’s quite incredible really.
“The bar is very high when you walk into the club. When I came to the club, I was at Nottingham Forest and being the main source of goals. At Liverpool because Robbie Fowler was that, I tailored my game around him and still got 50 goal involvements, 50 direct goal involvements in 80 games, which is good. But it still, when I left, felt like failure because we didn’t win anything with it.
“So with Darwin Nunez, it’s an interesting one because when you look at him, you think he’s got all the physical attributes. If you look at the Premier League, Erling Haaland, even Chris Wood, there has been a reinvention of the number nine.
“He’s quick, he can run in behind, he’s got decent feet. He’s no Messi at his feet but he can run with the ball. I think that in terms of his goals output, strikers are either consistent goalscorers – Again, you go back through Liverpool, you have Suarez, Torres, Fowler and Owen who were scoring week in, week out – or you have players that score in fits and starts.
“So Haaland will score ten goals in three games and then have a little spell of a couple of games without a goal and work like that.
“But Darwin is neither. I think that looking at them, you think to yourself, there’s so much more because we’ve seen some of the goals he scored, whether it be for the club or for his country.
“And I wonder, he seems a little bit shy, a little bit in his shell as a personality. And I think that in the dressing room, sometimes you have to go, ‘F**king give it to me! Get it in the box and give it to me!’
“That’s Haaland. If you think of Haaland, you know he’s going to say to people, ‘Give it to me!’ And he points to people where he wants it. And I think that’s the bit of Darwin Nunez’s game that’s missing, which then has a direct impact on his goals output.
“He’ll always get his ten, 15, maybe 20 goals depending on if he plays all tournaments. But what you want to really see him get is 20-25 Premier League goals, which added to Diaz’s and Salah’s and Jota’s and other people’s, would seriously put distance between Liverpool and the other teams.
“So, for me, it’s just a little bit of spice, maybe a little bit of nastiness. Sometimes you have it, sometimes you don’t.
“I think that sometimes when you’ve got somebody like Mo Salah around you, that takes all the plaudits, the Egyptian King, you look at him as the main goal scoring conduit, sometimes you can take a back seat.
“So I’d just like him to come out and do, even interview and go, ‘You know what? Mo Salah is the man but I want to be the number nine here! Liverpool had some great strikers over the years. I’m going to get me 25 goals this season!’
“And almost convince himself that he has that spark, that bite, and that he has that belief to be a great Liverpool striker because he has all the attributes to do it.
“But if you look at him, you go, ‘Is there more to come?’ And I think that that more to come is going to be personality, belief that he’s the man at Liverpool.”
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