Darwin Nunez cut a lonely figure as he walked off the pitch with his head bowed.
The Uruguay attacker should have been Liverpool’s hero away against Aston Villa last night. The most expensive signing in the club’s history ought to have been basking in the glory of firing them 10 points clear at the top of the Premier League table.
Instead, a crestfallen Nunez was left with an all-too-familiar sinking feeling and another glaring miss for his collection.
“There’s one person in the dressing room who feels quite down and you know who that is I think,“ said head coach Arne Slot.
Having equalised through Trent Alexander-Arnold’s deflected strike, Liverpool were firmly in the ascendancy at 2-2 when substitute Conor Bradley’s pass sent Dominik Szoboszlai scampering through on goal in the 69th minute.
As goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez came out to meet him, the Hungary midfielder unselfishly squared to Nunez, who somehow conspired to shoot over the bar from six yards with the net gaping.
Darwin Nunez misses a golden opportunity to put Liverpool ahead 😬
📺 @tntsports & @discoveryplusUK pic.twitter.com/8f0rFedPHs
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) February 19, 2025
A disbelieving Slot had his hands on his head before asking the fourth official, “Not offside?” No, Arne, there was nothing to spare Nunez’s blushes. Data firm Opta gave the chance an xG (expected goals) value of 0.75.
“I saw an unbelievable pass from Conor Bradley and a power run from Dominik Szoboszlai, who made the perfect touch to square it, because from a one-vs-one with the goalkeeper, he made it an open-goal chance,” Slot explained.
“Of course, it was not the best leg for Darwin, he is right-footed, but it was still a big chance. Very unlucky. I was hoping he could have got another because a player like him probably wouldn’t miss two chances in a row.
“Soon afterwards, he went towards Martinez again, but Martinez made a great sliding tackle to win the ball. We were all disappointed, but it’s normal the player who misses a chance is a bit more disappointed than the rest.”
After coming on for Diogo Jota midway through the second half, Nunez’s dismal cameo consisted of just 10 touches. He completed two passes, had no successful dribbles and won just one of the five duels he contested. He seemed to be operating on a different wavelength to his team-mates.
Hope that his dramatic match-winning double at Brentford a month ago would act as the perfect confidence boost proved misplaced. Nunez has not scored in eight appearances since, though only two of those have been starts. He boasts just six goals in all competitions in 2024-25 (one every 285 minutes of game time, the equivalent of just over three full 90-minute matches) from an xG of 9.6.
Slot has improved so many of the players he inherited from Jurgen Klopp last summer, but sanding off Nunez’s rough edges has so far proved beyond him.
The former Benfica striker has regressed rather than kicked on in his third season at Anfield and a parting of the ways looks increasingly likely come the summer.
Liverpool’s decision to snub interest in Nunez from the Saudi Pro League in January made perfect sense given the difficulty of recruiting a suitable replacement in the winter window. But come the close season, they need to offload him and invest in a new No 9 better suited to Slot’s brand of football.
Jota, who was also guilty of squandering a golden opportunity against Villa, is worth persevering with. There were some promising signs of him regaining his sharpness, but the fact he was starting back-to-back top-flight matches last night for the first time since October underlined his fitness issues. You cannot bank on him.
It was telling during Jota’s long absence from the league starting XI that Slot largely opted to play Luis Diaz through the middle rather than the erratic Nunez. Liverpool played 16 Premier League games before Jota returned to the starting line-up against Wolverhampton Wanderers last weekend and Nunez started just six of them (and four of those were the first four).
Slot felt like he had to give Diaz a breather against Villa given his recent workload, with the Colombian only coming off the bench for the game’s final quarter. Despite Cody Gakpo being sidelined with an ankle problem, there was still no game time for Federico Chiesa, who has played just 25 minutes of league football in his Liverpool debut season.
Liverpool have six senior attackers, but so much of the burden in this title challenge when it comes to firepower rests on the shoulders of Mohamed Salah.
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Having scored the opener against Villa from Jota’s pass and then teed up Alexander-Arnold for the visitors’ second, Salah now boasts 29 goals and 20 assists in all competitions this season — a goal involvement every 64 minutes. His current tally of 15 away league goals this season is just one short of the club record held by Jimmy Smith (1929-30).
For context, Salah has 24 league goals in total in 2024-25 — Diaz, Gakpo, Jota, Nunez and Chiesa have 26 between them. As the Egyptian’s contract saga has rumbled on towards its expiry in June, his hand has grown stronger in negotiations with every passing week. He is in the form of his life and the void if he left in the summer would be vast.
Liverpool should have beaten Villa. They had 17 shots to nine and created an xG of 2.51 versus 0.67. But Slot’s side were left kicking themselves for the chances they missed at one end and the careless lapses at the other. They did not defend a set piece well enough before Youri Tielemans scored to make it 1-1 and then were too slow to close down Lucas Digne, who crossed for Ollie Watkins to head home.
The Premier League leaders, who lost Bradley to injury in the game’s closing stages, survived a late scare to extend their unbeaten league run to 22 matches and move eight points clear of Arsenal, who have a game in hand.
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“The only reason we could be happy with 2-2 is because they had the last chance of the game,” Slot said. “But I think for everything else I am not happy with 2-2. I liked our performance a lot — much more than I liked our performance against Wolves.
“What we must not do, and have done a bit too often now, is we don’t get what we deserve. If you look at all the chances, if you put them in a row from us and them, I think it’s clear which team should have won this game.”
Nunez squandered the best of them and it proved costly.
Slot will need to pick his chin off the floor because the Uruguayan will still have a part to play in the run-in. But against Villa, he showed why he remains down the pecking order and why beyond the summer he will surely be plying his trade elsewhere.
(Top photo: Molly Darlington/Copa/Getty Images)
