Darwin Núñez Deserves Better Punditry
Darwin Núñez scored a good goal then had a bad miss in Liverpool's win over Aston Villa. The analysis from pundits was very predictable.
Liverpool’s 2-0 win over Aston Villa was notable in several respects. It meant the Reds have made the 12th best start to a season in Premier League history. It opened a five point gap over second place after 11 games; every time a team held an advantage of at least that size at this point in the modern era, they won the title.
More interesting than either of those trivia nuggets was that we saw the return of classic Darwin Núñez. In his previous six appearances (totalling 331 minutes) he had taken just five shots in total. Against the Villans, the Uruguayan rattled off six in just over an hour.
The downturn in shot output is not unique to Núñez. As Mo Stewart recently investigated, whoever played centre forward for Arne Slot’s Liverpool saw their goal attempts largely vanish in recent weeks.
But this is Darwin. He led Europe’s big five leagues for shots per 90 last season, with 4.7, and was third with 4.5 in his debut campaign in England. No matter the improvement in his all-round game, if Núñez isn’t shooting relentlessly then the world feels even weirder than it already is.
The clash with Villa delivered a highlights package of Darwin shots. If you review them chronologically, your notes read something like this: shouldn’t have shot (blocked), goal, should’ve scored (off target), what are you doing? (saved), should’ve maybe scored (header wide) and probably shouldn’t have shot (saved). The efforts ranged in value from 0.02 to 0.41 expected goals, running the gamut of chance quality.
The 25-year-old’s performance was inevitably reviewed in Match of the Day. “Darwin Núñez got his goal, didn’t he, he’s a handful,” said Gary Lineker, doing that annoying thing of making a statement rather than asking a question yet still expecting an answer. “A bit erratic, but he’s a handful.”
Alan Shearer then spoke over a compilation of clips, highlighting good and bad aspects of Núñez’s play. Lineker had a follow-up question: “What do you think is missing about his finishing?”
At this point, Shearer (260 Premier League goals and 63 England caps) gave the answer that I (no appearances for my school team) could have given and knew was coming before he’d uttered a word.
“He’s better when he doesn’t have time to think about it, and it just happens naturally. When he has that three or four seconds to think about it, I just think he becomes more and more erratic.”
This may not be entirely wrong but it’s the stock phrase when Darwin misses a one-on-one, probably if any player does; Timo Werner analysis is likely very similar, I’m just not paying as much attention.
Data shows that carrying the ball before taking a shot makes it hard to score, even though Opta class a carry as just five metres, nothing like the distance Núñez covered for his worst miss against Villa. At the time of writing, Noni Madueke and Antoine Semenyo are joint-top in 2024/25 for carries leading to shots, with 14 each.
They’ve scored twice and once from them respectively. Mohammed Kudus has converted none of 12, Alejandro Garnacho is goalless from one shot fewer. While the data does not currently include the latest round of games, Mohamed Salah is listed at two goals from 12 carried-powered shots. He is better than Núñez in such situations, no question. But flawless? Far from it.
In reference to Shearer’s comments, how long to think about a chance is too long? Against Villa, Salah played the key pass for Darwin’s one-on-one at 31:28, the Uruguayan first touches the ball at 31:31, then shoots two seconds later. The time gaps were near identical for a counter-attack at Brentford last season, with the conclusion of the move being Núñez casually chipping the goalkeeper to score.
By his standards, the goal at the Gtech Stadium was a long pre-amble before scoring, as he took a total of three touches of the ball including the shot. If we disregard headers and penalties, which are inevitably one-touch finishes, only two of Darwin’s other 14 goals in 2023/24 saw him need more touches than he took against the Bees in the example here.
They were essentially the same goal, scored away from home in cup competitions against Bournemouth and Sparta Prague respectively. For both, the Uruguay international cut in from the left before firing into the roof of the net from long range. Ignore these three efforts and Núñez only scored from one or two-touch finishes.
But so did everybody else for Liverpool, more or less. Sixty-one of the Reds’ 88 goals which were not free-kicks, headers or penalties last season saw the scorer take fewer than three touches including the shot, with another 11 requiring exactly three.
That leaves just 11 for which the scorer may have had that indefinable length of too long to make it happen. There were not loads, even allowing for Diogo Jota doggedly carrying the ball through opposition back lines to score a few times.
One of Darwin’s goals this term saw him take four touches. There was also longer between the assist pass and his shot than there was for his big miss last time out. Despite aeons of thinking time, it was a superb strike.
It feels inevitable that Núñez will never become a clinical finisher. He was super hot in his final year with Benfica, arguably paying for it ever since. Both he and we deserve better from the pundits analysing his game, though. They have longer to think about it than Darwin has for his shots, for one thing.
Felt for a while now that Darwin for those who have made their mind up about him being a failure/waste of money/shite in the media or any SM forum will never be swayed regardless of what he achieves as there’s a growing trend of people who are never wrong. So when he does play well, which is far more frequent than is made out, scores a screamer or plays in Mo for another assist it will just be but ah he cost £85M, which he didn’t, or remember when he hit the post/run offside/cracked that Colombia fan etc etc. Couldn’t agree more Andrew Darwin does indeed deserve better punditry
This like when people totally rely on xG for who "should" have won a match. xG is a strong indicator, but not the be-all and end-all. You look at Darwin's numbers and almost everything says he's an ideal forward; not least the fact that he gets into so many good positions to take advantage of those chances. But the end product is what many will say is the only thing that matters. But I think too many are expecting Mo or Sadio-level output from someone who may simply not be that kind of player. The other problem that he has beyond pundits and highlights of him not hitting the net is his price tag, especially when playing on a squad with one of the steals of the century (Mo) and another who presents as a better finisher (Diogo) for half the cost. It's funny that Darwin is kind of a mix of Diogo and Naby Keita. The latter's numbers were almost always superlative, but he never seemed to provide that final X element that everyone had been hoping for in a box-to-box guy; partially because, like Diogo, he spent so much time off the pitch. I still have faith in Darwin. He's only 25 and he is still producing solid play, even if it doesn't always include goals.