Liverpool ‘crisis’ continues: Slot slams ‘lazy’ Nunez in ‘savage attack’ before striker ‘bites back’
Arne Slot launched a ‘savage attack’ on ‘lazy’ Darwin Nunez and the Liverpool forward continued their ‘war of words’ on social media. This is a ‘crisis’.
Haaland cattle
It is a sad day in football journalism. When The Sun website produces a headline of this calibre…
‘Haaland seen in second new motor of the week as he buys Ā£350k F1 SAFETY CAR’
…it raises expectations which are immediately lowered by the opening paragraph:
‘ERLING HAALAND drove home from Manchester City’s Champions League defeat to Real Madrid in his brand new lime green Formula 1 SAFETY CAR.’
That’s…that’s not right. We’re missing something here. An incredibly well-remunerated footballer was seen/spotted driving one of his many ludicrously expensive cars in the immediate aftermath of a chastening defeat for his club, and at no stage is the phrase ‘just hours’ or a variation thereof used? What are we doing here? What is even the point anymore?
Even the MailOnlineĀ weirdly decide against suggesting Haaland should spend the next week in solitary confinement, only going so far as to say he simply drove the car home ‘a day afterĀ Pep Guardiola’s side were humiliated on Europe’s biggest stage’.
Not just a day after?! Utter woke nonsense is what it is.
I’m just Ken
Whereas this is just nonsense in its purest, most distilled possible form.
While The Sun can and often do write whatever they want about Liverpool, safe in the knowledge a Merseyside-wide boycott ensures it won’t be read by anyone connected to the club anyway, they probably shouldn’t resort to such a dishonest representation of events as this:
‘Darwin Nunez bites back at Liverpool boss Arne Slot with two social media posts’
In fairness, Mediawatch clicked on that story fully expecting this ‘bite back’ to be Nunez posting two pictures of himself training vigorously after Slot questioned his work-rate and “behaviour” after the chance he missed against Aston Villa. There are in fact actual words from the forward so a huge pat on the back goes to Ken Lawrence.
But be under no illusions: that noise you hear is a barrel being scraped to within an inch of its existence.
The opening paragraph refers to Slot’s ‘savage attack’ on Nunez and, well…
Arne Slot on Darwin Nunezās miss: “A miss that I can acceptā¦ what is harder to accept, his behaviour after the chance” pic.twitter.com/zDeeh6UP7f
ā BeanymanSports (@BeanymanSports) February 20, 2025
It’s a wonder Nunez is still breathing. That clip, it says here, is of someone who ‘revealed he would read him the riot act’ in the most calm tone possible, having just praised him and pointed out his contribution to an excellent season.
Slot also apparently ‘accused’ Nunez of ‘being lazy’, which is something that just didn’t happen. Slot said Nunez “got too much in his head” after the miss and subsequently “was not the usual ĀDarwin who works his ass off and makes sure he helps the team”.
That is, at worst, a comment on his concentration and mentality, but absolutely nothing to do with being ‘lazy’ and Lawrence is entirely aware of the connotations involved when using that word.
The Sun in particular do seem to struggle with this, recently lying about Ruben Amorim calling Marcus Rashford lazy.
But back to Slot and Nunez, who ‘blasted back withĀ TWOĀ social media posts’.
Would you, dear reader, care to see this ‘bite back’/’blast back’? Consider this your trigger warning because what you’re about to read is not pretty.
‘His first post, quickly deleted, read: “Three weeks ago Darwin was the best, Darwin gave us the three points.
‘”But yesterday, I was unlucky enough to miss a goal and I am once again the ‘worst’ and the failure.
‘”I don’t fall, I get up and I am never going to give up. I am going to give my all until the last day at Liverpool. Resilience!”
‘It was accompanied by a āmusclesā emoji and a picture of him celebrating after scoring against the Bees.’
There is bitter social media post number one. The second is coming up if you still have the stomach for it:
‘”I wasn’t the best three weeks ago, nor am I the worst now.
‘”If I fall, I get up. You will never see me give up. I’m going to give it my all until my last day at Liverpool. Resilience!”‘
That is absolutely brutal, although the second post did also contain a ‘muscles’ emoji.
The only slight problem with this ‘bite back’/’blast back’ is that Nunez’s message was quite clearly in no way whatsoever actually aimed at Slot, but make no mistake: this is a ‘war of words’ and a ‘storm’ which will probably contribute to the ‘full-scale disaster’ of Liverpool bottling the title.
Crisis management
Lacking even a semblance of self-awareness, Lawrence has written a 1,000-word addendum to that story – an opinion piece in which he eviscerates Nunez and says he cannot be trusted.
But yes, Nunez was definitely referring to Slot in those social media posts and not his remarkably vocal critics, some of whom write with presumably straight faces that ‘his glaring, open-goal miss atĀ Villa ParkĀ has somehow helped turn an eight-point lead at the top of the Prem into what feels like a crisis’.
What a hilarious sentence to commit to print. Fair play.
Silence is golden
The Liverpool Echo have some words of encouragement – 1,000 or so – under this headline:
‘Darwin Nunez has easy way to silence Liverpool critics and be remembered for right reasons’
Not sure ‘score some goals’ needs to be padded out over 35 paragraphs with some old Ronny Rosenthal quotes, mind.
Martial awe
Mediawatch is all for finding new ways of laughing at Manchester United – or marvelling at the cost-cutting relentlessness of Sir Jim Ratcliffe – but this is an almighty stretch from The Sun website:
”He felt a lack of trust’ – Inside Anthony Martial’s amazing revival after Ronaldo’s Man Utd return broke his confidence’
Anthony Martial’s ‘amazing revival’ has put him behindĀ Ayoub El Kaabi, Jefte, Lorenzo Moron andĀ Zini in the Greek Super League top scorer stakes. It’s not the most embarrassing exit Manchester United have suffered recently.
