Analysing the Liverpool striker's output – does he need to more consistency as his team chase the Premier League title?
After his 96th-minute headed winner away to Nottingham Forest, it would be easy to describe ’s goalscoring as streaky. A player known for the chances he has missed has, after all, scored in three consecutive games for the first time.
There was an almost identical goal to cap the scoring in a 3-1 win at home to , leaning back to glance ’s cross into the far corner. Sandwiched between those two was his opener at Brentford, a counter-attack from deep that ended with the striker expertly chipping goalkeeper . Advertisement In the modern game, and especially in this team, the No 9 role has never been more multifaceted. That said, goals are always a striker’s currency. In November, head coach Jurgen Klopp talked about the “riddle of the life of a striker” when assessing Nunez. “You have a few goals already and it makes it easier. He will always miss chances, but if you miss the first five before you score it doesn’t feel great. He has had a good start to the season and has scored fantastic goals, all kinds of goals,” added Klopp. It brings the arbitrary discussions of form and consistency. Zoom out for the bigger picture and Nunez’s performance in front of goal is… almost exactly the same as last season. In just shy of 1,500 Premier League minutes this season , Nunez has scored 10 goals from 83 shots. Last season, it was nine from 84 shots. Based on expected goals per shot, his average shot quality is the same. The shot maps, though, paint two different pictures. Part of that is reflective of his role. “He can play on the wing as well and it all depends on how we want to work an opponent, where the space is, where you can unleash his full potential,” said Klopp, who used him off the left more last season — last season’s shot map shows that, with a high volume of chances in the left . However, his nine goals that season were scored within the width of the six-yard box and no more than 15 yards from goal — striker’s goals. This season, his shots and goals are more scattered, particularly down the right. Tweaks to Liverpool’s attack have contributed to this. Nunez has played more as a pure No 9. With moving inside from full-back, winger has played wider and deeper, opening space for Nunez to make channel runs for angled shots. His uptick in headers and downturn in left-footed shots show he is attacking more crosses and playing on the last line. “The speed, the finishing skills, the desire he has,” were Klopp’s main praises for Nunez in November. “When he’s fit he is really fit, so he can go and go again. You just don’t know where he will end up. He came in for really big money. It shows again that players need time. We forget that.” Advertisement Time. The biggest luxury in football and something strikers rarely get. Liverpool paid a club-record £85million for Nunez in July 2022. There was a similar early-season critique of ’s , who cost £64million and did not score in his first 14 Premier League appearances. Then he scored seven goals in his next six, becoming the youngest player to score in six consecutive Premier League games. was repeatedly branded a flop at and Liverpool, but this season, only , and Salah have scored more Premier League goals than his 14. scored just two in his first 39 league appearances for after a £58million transfer but has scored nine in his last 10 games. & Hove Albion’s is the latest striker enduring a dry spell. In 2023, he became the first teenager since Wayne Rooney in 2005 to score 10 Premier League goals in a calendar year, but since scoring away to in late November, . Of that group, Solanke and Richarlison are the oldest, at 26. Solanke and Ferguson turned professional through Category 1 academies in England; Watkins’ rise was via non-League and the English Football League; Nunez, like Hojlund, is playing in his fourth country before the age of 25. Adapting, on and off the field, takes time. Hojlund and Nunez have said the Premier League is stronger and faster than Europe’s other major leagues, a particular challenge for them as their attacking styles are predicated around speed and physicality. Unfortunately for Nunez, his success is measured against the exception, not the rule. The exception, of course, is ’s Haaland. Haaland and Nunez arrived in the Premier League at the same time, last summer, at similar ages, but entirely different playing backgrounds and No 9 styles. Their biggest similarity was hairstyles. Advertisement Haaland has already broken the record for most goals in a Premier League season , and, perhaps more impressively, has scored against every team he has faced in the competition. Since the start of last season, Haaland has scored at least twice in 14 different Premier League games. While Nunez only ranks 16th for Premier League goals since the start of 2022-23, he has scored twice in four games. On his good days, he is particularly hard to stop. The only players to score at least twice in more matches in that time are Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah and ’s . , Watkins, and all have as many as Nunez. Liverpool v Manchester City could help decide the Premier League title race – and The Athletic is analysing every angle that matters. ? Goalscoring is a volatile business. Nunez has become a case study that involves opening an analytical Pandora’s box, where the application of xG, which measures the quality of goalscoring chances, is more narrative-driven than insight-seeking. A focus on xG also drives an obsession about how close to the average a player is. This analyses skill, not technique. The difference is that technique is about ability — ie, what a player can do. Skill is how well they can apply it in game-specific situations, which require consistency and high-level cognition to select the optimal technique and execute it correctly. Take Nunez’s similar goals away to Newcastle in Liverpool’s third game of this season. It brought them three points in a game they largely spent 1-0 down and a man down. That was one of five games this season where Nunez has scored the winner — only Watkins and Haaland can match him for that. The technique: a finish across the goalkeeper from the right. The skill: a different finish based on the goalkeeper’s position. For the first, was deeper, almost on his line, so Nunez finished with his laces to drill the shot low . For the second, Pope came out, so Nunez used his instep to curl it past the goalkeeper. Consistency is Nunez’s issue. Over half of his shots are central and into the goalkeeper ‘silhouette’. He just does not hit the corners well enough. This issue is a symptom of another problem: his shot selection. He averages the most shots per 90 minutes in the Premier League this season . Plenty of these are from sub-optimal positions, taken from distance and/or wide angles with team-mates in better positions and often with multiple defenders in the way. Advertisement Nunez regularly shoots too early after Liverpool make high regains, failing to exploit overloads and space. This could be witnessed against Chelsea in January, when he failed to score from 11 shots, including a penalty. Since 2016-17, he is only the third player to have that many attempts in a single Premier League game yet finish the game goalless. He can also struggle to process fast-moving counter-attacks or hesitate when deciding whether to pass or shoot, or which run to make, allowing defenders to recover. In terms of his Opta-defined ‘big chance’ conversion rate, since the start of last season, Nunez ranks 30th out of 32 for conversion rate among players with at least 20 big chances — he scores them at a rate of just under one in four. The average in that group is 42 per cent. Even though he scored it, Nunez’s goal away to Brentford recently showed how he struggles to play percentages when shooting. Through on goal, running at speed, his optimal finishes would be to slot it either side of the goalkeeper, or to go around Flekken. The chip is executed perfectly, but realistically, it is the hardest way to score. Former Brighton & Hove Albion striker once said “the goalposts don’t move” when asked about translating finishing across divisions. They are words Nunez has started to follow, as his box movement has improved against settled defences, partly through working with Bielsa in the national team. He more regularly takes up positions in the blind spot of centre-backs and quickly spins his hips when the ball goes wide to reposition. This can be seen in the game against in September. Here, Liverpool play direct after some deep build-up. Salah gets to the byline and crosses deep for Nunez. He makes space with an incredibly smart and agile double movement — first, he hits the near post, which follows, then he switches and drops to the back post… … only to mess up the finish, going with his head and his right foot and putting it wide of the post. The best example of this was his goal at home to , timing the run to perfection to latch onto ’s chip in behind and poking past the goalkeeper with one touch. As a one-touch finisher, he scores at an average rate — it is the multiple-touch finishes that he overthinks. Haaland, Hojlund and Richarlison all take fewer touches before shooting, although that is partially reflective of team style. . After all, there have only been five instances of a player scoring in more than seven consecutive Premier League games . Nunez’s biggest strength is that when he is not scoring goals, he is assisting them. He has set up Salah five times this season, the most by any team-mate to another in the league. Nunez’s ability to play anywhere across the front line means Klopp can be tactically flexible and shuffle his pack without making substitutions. Advertisement Nunez’s worst run of the season was a 12-game spell between early November and Christmas, where he failed to score from 32 shots across all competitions but still pitched in with three assists. That came after another run where he had scored in three consecutive games in all competitions. There is added pressure on Nunez given how he “exploded” in his second season at Benfica, not to mention the precariousness of the title race and Liverpool’s reliance on winning games via late goals. Nunez will continue to be a player of extremes. This makes him unpredictable but also inconsistent . It’s a balance worth persisting with, though, as the events of last Saturday perfectly illustrated.
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