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No worries
If you enjoyed that, you might also like this from Simon Kuper - a Dutch-born English journo - from the Humans & Heroes Podcast.
Who is Liverpool's new manager Arne Slot?
What you are missing though is that the final pass should also be better from his teammates. We should be putting better crosses into the box. Unfortunately for Nunez his arrival has seen us change the way we attack. Trent now inverts and Robbo doesn't get forward as much. Ironically we used to be guilty of putting in too many crosses. That is something that would have suited Nunez. Look how many times Trent used whip crosses in really early for our forwards. Now we look to walk the ball in or create shooting opportunities for the likes of Trent, Szobo and Macca in central areas.
I missed Robbo commentating yesterday, how was he? Hoping we get my favourite Dennis-Ken combo for the final.
Thanks mate. That was a good listen.
Although, in what was a mostly positive piece, I was a bit worried about the Ten Hag comparisons. Not so much the bald, Dutch and provincial talk but Kuper seemed to highly rate Ten Hag as a coach as well and went so far as kind of dismissing the current state at Man Utd as being down to not having a proper structure in place behind the scenes and therefore Ten Hag having to make signings on his own. That may very well be case but watching this Man Utd suggest they're anything but well coached, regardless of the players he has at his disposal. Saying that, I don't think the Ten Hag comparisons stack up all that much given Ten Hag's only major stint was at the richest club in Holland whereas Slot has been successful at both AZ and Feyenoord. I know they'll inevitably occur given the bald, Dutch and provincial similarities and it's unfortunate but they don't seem to be comparable otherwise.
Just because it happened with Suarez doesn't mean it will happen with Nunez. I don't see the correlation other than.. nationality and hope. There is no basis that because one player had a certain trajectory that another player will have that same trajectory. There is very little behind it other than the parallels of having 2 players who are/were a bit erratic at the same age both from Uruguay hoping to make the step up at Liverpool.
If you're going to stick to your comparisons why don't you say that once Nunez hits a certain ceiling here, he'll then go on to be one of the best players of his generation. Because that is what Suarez was. Hell, some people think he's our best ever player in terms of sheer talent. Do you think that Nunez is capable of ever being that good?
And as for scoring against certain goalkeepers and defenders I find it mad that the idea of him playing against better players, defenders and goalkeepers most weeks in comparison to what he's been used to hasn't played a part. Yeah, he's scored against Alisson, Neuer etc but you can also argue he's scored a lot in the Europa League against goalkeepers you wouldn't be able to name or recognise in the street. As I said, DCL scored against Alisson last week, does that make him great? Goals in a few games against top goalkeepers is never a bad thing but you have to look at the bigger picture and see who he plays against most weeks. He blasted the ball at Jordan Pickford from 8 yards out last week with most of the goal to aim at. The fact that he scored against Alisson in the CL 2 or 3 years ago doesn't really matter as much to me as opposed to what he's producing now.
League 1 and 2 players have scored against Alisson in the cups. I bet players 70 places below Buffon in Italy scored against him in the odd cup game or friendly. It happens. He hasn't scored against any top goalkeepers this season has he? But because he scored against Neuer 3 years ago that means everything is alright.
Your original post fails on the eye test. For the vast majority of the season we’ve looked much better with Núñez in the team. It fails on the stats test too. The post I’ve quoted fails to recognise how big a problem our defence has been to our hopes of getting 90+ points. Game state is a huge deal and when we were hitting high 90 points totals we were the master of it. But now we’re going behind in game after game after game. It’s just not sustainable. Nor is conceding multiple goals in tricky away fixtures and expecting to win games. In short out attack simply wasn’t the problem.
