Should Liverpool Sell Darwin Núñez?

With Michael Edwards set to restore Liverpool's data-driven approach this summer, will Darwin Núñez be sold?

So when I wrote about finishing just last week, I really did think that would spell the end of me having to address that topic for the rest of the season at the very least. How foolish of me.

The blizzard is still raging on Merseyside, and one of the players who has contracted frostbite is Darwin Núñez. To be fair, he’s been living in the Arctic for most of his professional career as a footballer.

This guy is just addicted to running cold in front of goal, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything like it. He’s missed his fair share of chances since joining Liverpool in 2022, and Wednesday’s effort from six yards against Everton might be his worst yet.

Since, talk has emerged about his sale. Michael Edwards is back, he won’t take any prisoners. Jürgen Klopp signed him, and he’ll no longer be around. Liverpool need a striker who is clinical. All of that stuff.

So what happens this summer, what do you do with a player who seems to freeze everything that he touches?

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First of all, I do want to clarify that Núñez drives me absolutely insane. He’s the best worst player I’ve ever seen up close.

His touch, at times, suggests that he’s got his boots on the wrong feet. His decisions, at times, are peculiar, like he’s under pressure answering questions in the final round of Family Fortunes. He’s caught offside, at times, like he’s a dog chasing a bone without a care in the world.

And his finishing is just, well, weird. Núñez scores worldies, but then falls over when he’s presented with an easy one. He connects with the ball pretty well, but always seems to hit the goalkeeper or the woodwork. He is a genuine enigma at the best of times.

All of that is extremely annoying for us to watch as supporters, especially considering we’re used to Roberto Firmino, who was technically flawless and quietly glided across the pitch stitching things together for Liverpool across eight memorable seasons.

Núñez is a nightmare, but I wouldn’t be actively trying to sell him. From a data perspective, he’s a diamond in the rough. An unpolished jewel who has been presented with a decent crack of the whip so far, but is still only 24 years old.

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If there’s one thing data allows you to do when scouting and analysing players, it is cut through unnecessary noise. Block out the nonsense, and focus on what matters. There are tons and tons of stigmas out there, and you need to be really careful of them.

At their very best, Liverpool focused on the signal, not the noise. Mohamed Salah is a Premier League flop. Cool, we’ll have him. Andy Robertson is a defender for Hull City, who conceded 80 goals (!!) last term. Cool, we’ll have him. Gini Wijnaldum got relegated with Newcastle United. Cool, we’ll have him.

In addition to those meaningless shouts, players are often criticised for their technical deficiencies and physical traits. Ian Graham, Liverpool’s former director of research, put so much faith in the numbers because they allowed him to effectively disregard that stuff.

Speaking on the Freakonomics podcast many years ago, he said:

“There are players who shine through in the data, but don’t naturally shine through for your typical football fan or even your typical scout. These are sort of awkward, ungainly-looking players or players that have been overlooked for various other purposes.”

Núñez is about as ungainly as it gets. He plays football like a baby giraffe, but guess what? He actually does things that matter within the context of winning matches.

There are thousands of really technical footballers out there. Players who look easy on the eye and who appear graceful in possession, and loads of them offer nothing in terms of actual meaningful product. They are basically freestylers.

Graham opened up on what matters in a more recent interview with ESPN. The below segment, taken from that chat, is brilliant:

“A scout or a coach would say, ‘Why do we like this forward?’ His analytics team would respond, ‘He takes loads of really good shots.’ The scout or coach would counter, ‘Yeah, but does he drive inside enough? Does he bring his teammates into play enough?’

‘But we're playing them up front,’ Graham said. ‘He takes loads of good quality shots. There is literally nothing else to say. All other arguments, they're second-order effects compared to this. But people love to mystify and bring more and more factors into play. A use of the data is just to say: This is the important thing and we might be wrong about it — we sometimes are wrong — but you have to come up with some really good arguments against this one really important thing.’”

I personally think Diogo Jota is a bit of a scruffy forward, for example, but he gets on the end of great shots. And when Liverpool signed him from Wolves, they also had a major interest in Timo Werner, another enigmatic attacker who is a massive threat, but is known for missing loads because he’s not that composed.

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So why the focus on shots and not goals? Well, there’s a few reasons behind this, but judging a forward based on goals is a bit like judging a manager or a team based on results.

Results are outcomes. They can just happen, especially in a low-scoring sport like football. So rather than focusing on outcomes, you focus on the process behind the outcomes to determine whether they are likely to continue or not.

Did Manchester United really deserve to win five on the bounce? If not, they probably aren’t that good, so their fine form is unlikely to persist, and you can apply a similar logic to forwards.

When Miguel Almirón went on that remarkable hot streak for Newcastle United last season, I didn’t add him to my fantasy team. He damaged my rank for a few weeks, no doubt, but his run was never going to continue for that long.

Out of nowhere, he suddenly looked like the greatest finisher on earth. He scored seven times in 592 minutes of Premier League football from shots worth about three goals at a push. Since, the same player has amassed 3,614 minutes in all competitions and scored five goals.

It was clear that his purple patch was going to end, because it wasn’t sustainable from the beginning. He wasn’t getting the shots to be scoring at such a healthy rate, and he was converting about 30 per cent of his efforts into goals, which just doesn’t happen for very long. The typical average is around half that.

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So when it comes to our number nine, this is why Núñez is such a frustrating puzzle. A goal is just a shot, albeit one that actually finds the net. Núñez gets absolutely loads of shots, and optimal ones too.

So far this season, he’s averaging 4.7 shots in the Premier League, which is the joint-most across Europe big five leagues alongside Kylian Mbappé, who is averaging the exact same amount for Paris Saint-Germain.

His xG from those shots isn’t bad, either. Núñez is averaging around 0.7 per 90 this term, placing him sixth across Europe’s big five leagues behind only Harry Kane, Erling Haaland, Victor Boniface, Serhou Guirassy and Loïs Openda, who is absolutely worth tracking.

The process is clearly good. So the outcomes should be good, right? Well, this is exactly why I’ve been tipping him to explode since the dawn of time, but it isn’t happening.

The football machine is still spitting out too many misses, and not enough goals, so something is broken. Has Núñez been unlucky? Definitely, just ask your nearest goalpost.

Aside from bad fortune, though, I am gradually coming to terms with the reality that he’s just not that good at finishing. Our man has no chill about him, and you can see that when he’s clean through on goal.

Everything is hurried and manic. There just isn’t enough control, and that goes for Liverpool as a team unit as well, which probably isn’t helping him and could change under a new manager next season once Klopp departs.

Rather than Núñez being a striker who will break records sooner rather than later, maybe he’s just going to remain as the type who will miss ten for every one that he converts, which is annoying but still isn’t that bad when you think about it.

Despite missing a million chances this term, he’s still posted 31 goals and assists in all competitions this season. On a per-90 basis, he’s averaging more goals and assists than every player in Liverpool’s squad except Salah and Jota, and don’t forget, that’s in spite of his outcomes being messed up.

The best case scenario for Núñez is he matures with age, becomes more cultured and actually finishes his chances at a normal rate. For context, an ordinary rate of conversion from his 159 shots this term would deliver about 24 goals, and that’s only in the Premier League.

The worst case scenario is what we’re seeing now. This is pretty much his floor, and it still consists of more returns than Cody Gakpo and Luis Díaz. For all of his defects, he has an undeniable impact.

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If you get an offer for Núñez this summer, maybe you think about it, but that probably applies to all five of Liverpool’s forwards.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more frustrating player represent my club, but if you had never seen him perform before and you focused solely on the data and nothing else, you wouldn’t be in a rush to sell him. You’d just wait for the blizzard to end.