RIP net spend
Darwin Núñez | Liverpool player | Fighter
- Thread starter horsechoker
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RIP net spend
City’s trophy now.
Goals. The most precious commodity in football. Something Manchester United will be sorely lacking this season unless someone pulls a rabbit out of a hat pretty damn soon.
Name a better/cheaper alternative? Because we should be all over that player if he exists.
I already listed a bunch of players who would cost less than Nunez. One of them is Mane.. who they sold.
Jonathan David is cheaper. Better at some things, worse at others. Probably not as good a player overall, but one we should be able to get.
It’s bizarre. I looked away and missed his goal but heard Tyler describe it as a “brilliant finish” so was interested in the replay just to see it was basically a tap in that he decided to head from 2 yards out…
I didn’t see that list. Could you email it to John Murtough?
He’s blocked me
It's Tyler say no more
It was one of those situations where the commentators were overblowing his contribution to such a ridiculous extent the natural inclination while watching was to do the opposite. He was nowhere near as good as ITV wanted him to be but it was a good performance. Very good considering it’s still early days for him in this league, at his new club.
Is just me or does he look like the yoga instructor from GTA V?
Yet you hadn't even heard of Nunez until Liverpool signed him.
If it hasn’t been proven to you by this point that goals can come from all sorts of different areas then I don’t know what will. Fecking Lukaku has done 200m worth of transfers at this point because he “brought goals” yet consistently made his teams worse. Goals should never be a singular thing you overpay for if the player is deficient in other areas. City walked the league last year without an actual striker because they consistently create opportunities that don’t require some world class finisher to be on the end of.
Honestly I would probably respect the Nunez signing a bit more if he was a true lethal finisher, because he’s technically poor but very athletic and very good at finding space and that Liverpool team will create loads for him.
He played against us twice last season (scoring two or three I think).
The list contained Ronaldo. Please don’t send it to John Murtaugh.
He will score goals for Liverpool. Which is the point. He’s already a prolific goal-scorer (at an inferior team) and has a lot of the qualities Klopp expects in his attacking players. Quick, direct, athletic and hard-working when the opposition have the ball. He’s the anti-Haaland in terms of team fit. He’ll be a very good signing for them. And would have been a very good signing for us. Depressing but true.
He literally scored twice against Liverpool in the CL last season
Jesus. That sounds like a terrible list.
I do think we might have missed a trick by not signing Gabriel Jesus.
I'd not be surprised if he outscores Nunez this season, plus I think his overall ability and contribution on the pitch is better.
Let's be fair, having him rotate with Firminho gives Liverpool an edge. They're strikers with completely different traits but can be used effectively dependent on the style of the team they're facing. Firminho is all about link up play and breaking down opponents by drawing the wide players in. Nunez is simply a bigger goal threat with a physical edge.
It's exactly what we should have been looking to do with Ronaldo - optimistically Martial could do the job.
It's exactly what we should have been looking to do with Ronaldo - optimistically Martial could do the job.
Not half as big a trick as City missed by selling him!
Yeah, he’d have been a good signing for us too. Feck it, I even feel like we missed out on Richarlison. Or almost any other striker signed by any other club this summer. Our failure to sign a striker after losing Cavani and Greenwood (and soon Ronaldo?) is fecking baffling.
Well he's had one season of prolific goalscoring. While playing in the Portugese league and heavily overperforming on his underlying stats at that. The season before that he scored 20 fewer goals in slightly more appearances.
Whether last season's prolific goalscoring continues or not is part of the risk of paying 85m for him.
Sure. But he’s at an age where breakout seasons are to be expected. It’s not like signing a 25 year old at the end of a hot streak. He’s more likely to kick on than regress.
Although I’ll admit to having no clue about the stats you’re alluding to?
You can make the argument that Mane is a better player currently, but by selling Mane and getting Nunez in they are planning for the long term. They probably didn't want to be in a situation where they were relying on 2-3 players in their 30s up front, and are therefore gradually transitioning away from the Mane-Firmino-Salah trio. Salah is the best player among them, so it makes sense that they are keeping him while gradually incorporating younger players for Firmino and Mane. It might weaken them slightly in the short term, but in the long term I think it is the right strategy.
Lukaku was very good at Inter.
He comes on and misses a huge one v one to kill the game off. Then makes a complete mess of the header that it was going so wide it ended up hitting the defenders hand and they get a penalty. But cause he scores a tap in, ITV have asked us to welcome R9 to the premier league. O__K
Yep. This sums up my feelings too. My concern is we won't sign anyone and if we do we will be paying Nunez type fees anyway as shown by the Martinez price and Antony quoted prices.
He comes on against the best team in the world draws a penalty and then scores. I’ll take it
I think Patrick Schick could be available for less and he is a much more complete player, and outscored Haaland last season. We should be all over Schick.
Drew a penalty? Completely miss headed it.
If he carries on making a mess of big chances like that I’ll take it too!
He scored 26 goals league goals from 16-18ish xG, a 30.6% conversion rate. For comparison, Haaland got 22 league goals from 17.6 xG last season, a 27.3% conversion rate.
The key difference being that Haaland has sustained that level for three seasons in a row, which is why he has all the hype he does. Whereas the season before last Nunez scored six league goals while underperforming his xG.
So either Nunez had a pretty stunning overnight transformation into a better goalscorer than the supposedly generational talent Haaland, or last season he hit a level he was inevitably going to regress from.
That doesn't mean he'll be bad for Liverpool as even if he had scored a more sustainble-looking 18-20 goals it would still have relatively impressive. But it does mean his fee was probably inflated off the back of an outlier season and he's not quite the goalscorer last season's returns suggest.
My money’s on Haaland not being the generational talent everyone thinks he is.
Haaland is obviously an unusually prodigious talent who matured far more quickly than most but who’s to say that Nunez might not develop a bit later (like most ‘normal’ footballers) but reach a similar level of consistency in front of goal? Along with offering a hell of a lot more when his team isn’t in possession.
It just means the circumstances changed and the sample size is small. Too early to call it an outlier season.
That’s what pisses me off. There are so many strikers out there who would improve us. And we’ve desperately needed another option up top going back to the beginning of last season (arguably years before that, once we realised Martial was flattering to deceive)
Absolutely. As much as I enjoy watching Martial in the pre season he is just not reliable long term.
He's going to be a nuisance for everyone, I include his teammates in that but he will eventually turn out to be a relative success.
Thought he looked pretty decent when he came on, which you wouldn't have expected from reading this thread prior to the game. Missed a few chances but think he'll end up having a decent return this year, certainly seems to suit Liverpool better than Haaland does City.
Celebration was a bit over the top but let's be honest if that was a new signing for United we'd be all over it.
Celebration was a bit over the top but let's be honest if that was a new signing for United we'd be all over it.
Remember when that shining beacon of morality Jurgen Klopp questioned football’s ethics when United spent £90m on Pogba?
I do
I do