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Liverpool FC Forum / Re: Darwin Núñez (Darwin Gabriel Núñez Ribeiro)
« Last post by Scottymuser on Today at 04:39:49 pm »For Liverpool, he's 12.66 goals under what he should be in the Premier League. We've just heard that 3500 minutes is enough of a sample size to be sure about something, so I think that tells us he's considerably below average at finishing.
No he isn't? Understat is not a particularly good xG to use, as if there are two shots (one being saved by the keeper, who parries it to the same player say) they can have an xG of >1 - when it is obvious that you can only score 1 goal - so even if they score it, they have still under-performed the model! So you in the case of strikers where they put a lot of their shots close enough to the keeper to save, and rebound (as opposed to hitting them high and wide), understat will quite often be significantly higher in the xG. Whereas fbref, and the like, have him on a much more sensible npxG of 26.3 compared to his 20 goals.
The thing is, finishing *can* be learnt - Suarez for instance was about as good a finisher for us over his first 2 seasons as Nunez (he was, before you tgry and argue otherwise), but then it clicked and he exploded. Ditto someone like Forlan - at United, getting loads of good chances but always getting unlucky; left United and in a team where he felt more comfortable it clicked, and he was a top 5 player in the world for 5+ years. And Nunez is still only 24.
What the stats also tell us is he is a creative *GOD*, this season especially - which none of Gakpo, Diaz or Jota are particularly good at. So the question then becomes - does his creativity outweight his (for now) poorer finishing, and can his finishing be improved. My argument (as is many on here) is yes to the first, and probably yes to the second. He has hit the post 12 times right? Now some of those were world class keeping; which is unlucky. But even on those others - hitting the post means you were only 2-3 inches away from scoring - I'd argue that someone who does hit the post a lot is more likely to be able to make that final 1% adjustment and start banging them in, compared to someone who misses more often by not hitting the target.
