Darwin Nunez: The instigator of Liverpool's next major tactical evolution?

The Uruguayan's arrival would signal the start of a new era for this Liverpool team.

Darwin Nunez, then. 

It has become abundantly clear over the past 24 hours or so that Liverpool are deadly serious about signing him this summer. As per reports from various reputable publications, Jürgen Klopp is a huge admirer, and the player has agreed personal terms at Liverpool amid strong interest from elsewhere. At the time of writing, several Portuguese media outlets are indicating that the deal is more or less already done, likely for around €80m with add-ons taking it up to €100m, and that it’s just a matter of time until it’s over the line. By the time you read this, there may well have been further significant updates. 

These things are never a formality until you actually get the official announcement, as the likes of Yevhen Konoplyanka and Nabil Fekir have taught us so painfully in the past, but all the signs would seem to point towards Nunez becoming a Liverpool player sooner rather than later. You get the sense it’s a move that Liverpool have probably been working on for quite some time and have grown increasingly confident of completing, hence why they’ve allowed it to become public information at this stage. 

It also goes some way to explaining why they’re seemingly open to the idea of allowing Sadio Mane to move on, so long as Bayern Munich make a more acceptable offer than the two they’ve put on the table so far. His departure, possibly along with Takumi Minamino, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Nat Phillips and Neco Williams, will go a long way to covering the Nunez fee alone, without biting too much into whatever budget Liverpool would’ve set aside for this window already. 

Quite how long ago Liverpool were privy to Mane’s desire to leave is impossible to say, so it’s difficult to gauge whether Nunez was a player they’d already been eyeing up as part of a long-term succession plan, or whether this is a direct response to a situation they hadn’t anticipated with Mane. What can be said for sure, is that the version of Mane we’ve seen for most of this calendar year is not the type of player he’s been for the vast majority of his time at the club. 

It’s been quite a while now since Mane was a jet-heeled left winger capable of skipping past players with ludicrous ease before cutting inside and wreaking havoc in front of goal. Although not identical in profile, and not quite as prolific (yet), Luis Diaz has already picked up that particular baton while bringing several different qualities of his own to the party. 

The player Liverpool are most likely losing is, instead, a centre-forward. In that sense, it’s entirely logical that they’ve chosen to go for a number nine rather than a wide forward to replace Mane. What’s really intriguing, though, is that this is the first time Klopp has pinpointed a conventional striker as a priority transfer target since joining Liverpool.

He enjoyed enormous success with Robert Lewandowski and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang at Borussia Dortmund, of course, but at Liverpool his success has been built around a front three comprising an extremely unorthodox, arguably unique focal point in Roberto Firmino, whose primary role has been to drop deep, drag defenders out of shape and create space and chances for Mane and Mohamed Salah to exploit. Firmino’s game time has dwindled significantly since the signing of Diogo Jota, but he too, while a completely different type of player to Firmino, wasn’t signed as an out-and-out number nine as such (though he’s shown he can be very effective through the middle in certain games). 

Nunez therefore represents a pretty drastic departure from the kind of forward we’ve become accustomed to watching under Klopp (Divock Origi aside), which opens up all kinds of avenues for this team in terms of tactical evolution. While he could conceivably become the new lynchpin of the front three, providing a more physical presence in between Diaz (or Jota) and Salah in the standard 4-3-3 blueprint, he’s by no means a static penalty box poacher, and also more than capable of posing a threat from out wide on the left. 

His arrival might also lead Klopp to deploy a variation of 4-2-3-1 on a more regular basis, especially when you consider the fact that Fabio Carvalho is a natural number ten. Harvey Elliott and Firmino would fit well into that free-roaming attacking midfield position, too. It’s a system Klopp has flirted with on plenty of occasions at Liverpool without ever fully committing to, but the prospect of a fluid front four with a striker of Nunez’s stature leading the line is a tantalizing one. In certain games, especially against bottom-half opposition, it’s something we might well see more of next season. 

(As an aside, it’s fascinating that after building so much of their recent success around systems without orthodox centre forwards, Klopp and Pep Guardiola have both picked out 6ft-plus strikers as their primary transfer targets this summer.)

From a numbers perspective, it’s hard not to be excited about what Nunez might bring to this Liverpool team if the transfer goes through. In 2021/22, he plundered 34 goals in 41 appearances in all competitions for Benfica, with six of those coming in the Champions League, including two against Barcelona, one against Bayern Munich and one in either leg of the quarter-final against Liverpool. 

His average of a goal every 76 minutes in the Primeira Liga, meanwhile, was the most prolific rate of any player to have played at least 1,000 minutes in Portugal, England, Germany, Spain, France and Italy last season. By comparison, Robert Lewandowski averaged a goal every 84 minutes, Erling Haaland every 87 minutes, Karim Benzema every 96 minutes, and Kylian Mbappe every 108 minutes. 

That comes with the obvious caveat about the relative quality of the Portuguese league, but still, it’s not to be sniffed at. Even if Nunez were to only score at around half that rate for Liverpool next season, he’d still end the season with a very healthy overall tally. As well as the sheer quantity, the variety of goals Nunez scores is mightily impressive. Of his 34 goals last season, he scored 17 on his right, five on his left, six with his head and six from the penalty spot. 

He massively overperformed his xG in the league, it’s worth noting, scoring 26 goals from around 16 xG. Whether that’s sustainable in the long run, only time will tell – it’s quite conceivable that he’ll regress substantially towards the mean (while still scoring a lot of goals), or he could keep it up simply because he’s a way above average finisher who can regularly score the kind of chances most other players can’t.

It’s not as if scoring goals was a major problem for Liverpool in most parts of last season (they scored 145 in total), but in some games, such as the three cup finals, it was hard to escape the feeling that they could’ve done with a more ruthless finisher – or at least another forward capable of posing defenders a totally different kind of problem to solve than the likes of Salah, Mane, Jota and Diaz. 

Also, given the amount of time Liverpool spend playing against teams who put everyone behind the ball and camp in their own box, having a player of Nunez’s ilk, at 6ft 2in, would give Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson a much more viable target to aim for when crossing into a congested penalty area.

As many have pointed out since Liverpool’s concrete interest emerged, Nunez isn’t yet the complete package. He ranks very lowly compared to other strikers in Europe’s major leagues in areas such as passes completed, chances created and pressures – so clearly, there’s plenty of scope for further development, which is entirely normal at just 22 years of age. It’s also not necessarily down to a lack of ability, but what he’s actually being asked to do in the role he plays for Benfica, which isn’t directly comparable to the way he’d be used at Liverpool. He provided 30 assists across 2019/20 (at Almeria) and 2020/21 (at Benfica), so there’s certainly creative potential in his locker. 

Ultimately, Liverpool wouldn’t be considering making him their all-time record signing if they didn’t have a very, very high degree of confidence that he’s the right fit for what they need. From the backroom analysts and the scouts all the way through to Klopp, a lot of very intelligent people will have scoured all the details, not only to do with Nunez’s qualities on the pitch, but also what he’s like as a personality and how he’ll fit into the group. The fact that Pep Lijnders, Vitor Matos and Julian Ward all have in-depth, first-hand knowledge of Portuguese football, and no doubt an extensive list of contacts there, is also hugely valuable in this regard.

If Liverpool do now go ahead and seal the deal for Nunez, his arrival won’t just send out a booming signal of intent – it will, in effect, mark the beginning of a whole new era as Klopp continues to piece together his second great Liverpool team.