Darwin Nunez offers Klopp Premier League profligacy solution in West Ham rout

Darwin Nunez was brilliantly Dawin Nunez-y and offered Jurgen Klopp a solution to Liverpool’s Premier League profligacy in their spanking of West Ham.

Liverpool have scored 0.106 goals per shot in the Premier League this season.  That’s significantly worse than title rivals Arsenal (0.129) and Manchester City (0.146), and even inferior to profligacy kings Chelsea (0.119).

Luis Diaz (0.096), Cody Gakpo (0.095) and Darwin Nunez (0.085) are 46th, 48th and 53rd respectively in a ranking of forwards to have played over 400 minutes in the Premier League this season.

Each of them has a negative ‘non-penalty goals minus non-penalty expected goals’ score, and only Marcus Rashford (-2.9), Rasmus Hojlund (-3.0) and Dominic Calvert-Lewin (-3.1) are worse off than chief Reds squanderer Nunez (-2.8).

Before the season started, questions over Liverpool’s ability to mount a top four challenge focused on their all-new midfield. How would they adapt to a new environment? How would they work together? Who would play as the No.6? Could they match the energy of the departees in their pomp?

But now, with the midfield thriving and driving Liverpool into the title picture, it’s the supposed plethora of quality forward options – thought by many to be the best collection in the division – that’s casting doubt over their ability to stay the course.

Their wastefulness was brought into a harsh light after the 0-0 draw with Manchester United, in which Liverpool broke a record by failing to score from 34 shots.

In a bid to uncover a more fruitful attacking force, Jurgen Klopp moved Nunez to the left and played Cody Gakpo in the middle against West Ham on Wednesday, while Harvey Elliott was given a rare start on the right with an overburdened Mohamed Salah rested.

It was a Liverpool performance with at least twice as much energy as the lethargic display against the Red Devils, as the Anfield crowd reacted in kind after Gary Neville’s weekend jibe.

“Nunez, Nunez, Nunez,” they chanted in the second half, responding to the Uruguayan battling for the ball in his own half, shortly after his assist for Curtis Jones’ goal.

It was a brilliant finish through Alphonse Areola’s legs by Jones – who scored an even better goal to round the game off as West Ham capitulated – but Nunez’s vision was the key, with his pass tearing West Ham open to create the chance.

He looks far more menacing coming from the wing; when his sole focus isn’t breaking the lines and getting in the box. He was denied a goal by the fingertips of Areola having stormed across the pitch to the edge of the box.

But it feels as though goals will come from him when they’re not the be all and end all, and even if they don’t he offers plenty besides when not ploughing what has at times looked a lonely furrow as the No.9. He needs to be involved.

It will certainly be a tempting solution for Klopp, who has been perservering with Diaz on the left in Diogo Jota’s absence, despite the Colombian’s alarming, but entirely understandable, drop in form. Indeed, it will be particulary tempting after Gakpo ended his domestic goalscoring drought.

His arrowed strike from the edge of the box was his first goal outside of the Europa League since the start of November, when he scored in the previous League Cup round against Bournemouth.

If Nunez starts on the left then Gakpo’s got to be the man down the middle, and that currently looks like the best option for Klopp, who will hope his side hasn’t used up too many goals in this Hammers thumping with Arsenal to come on Saturday, when he will likely need his misfiring forwards to come to the Premier League party.