How does Liverpool-bound Darwin Nunez score his goals?

13 Jun 2022 15:54 BST
4 min read

Darwin Nunez, Benfica, 2021/22 — © ProShots

Darwin Nunez is joining Liverpool. But what kind of goalscorer are the Reds acquiring from Benfica?

At FootballTransfers, we chose to find out. The Uruguayan scored 34 goals in all competitions for his club in 2021/22, including goals against Barcelona, Bayern Munich and, of course, Liverpool both home and away.

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But what are the makeup of these goals and what can we learn from them? Let's take a look.

Darwin Nunez: Goal Types

DARWIN NUNEZ: GOAL TYPES

GOAL TYPE	#
TOTAL	32
RIGHT (EX PENS)	18
LEFT	4
HEAD	5
PENALTIES	5

Nunez is a player who does most of his work inside the penalty area. Just two of his 34 goals came outside that position and one of those, versus Sporting Covilha in the Taca da Liga, had an xG of 0.01 because it was so far out and the goalkeeper let is spill through his hands.

Most of the time he is in the box, a threat in the area but also in the right place when the ball lands to convert. Indeed over 80% of his goals arrive in the area from goal-line to penalty spot, within the width of the six-yard box. That gives an indication of what type of player he is.

Darwin Nunez: Goal/Shot Positions — © ProShots

You can also see, however, that he isn't scared of shooting from outside the area but the conversion rate from these positions is desperately poor. Liverpool will likely look to make him smarter in possession and less susceptible to attempting low tariff chances with an extremely low xG.

Of his goals, 13 were converted with a single touch, while eight required two touches or more, so he is not entirely a one-touch converter of chances like Erling Haaland may be viewed.

It's curious that he managed to score versus Liverpool both home and away in similar ways. He curls both efforts into the far corner beyond the reach of Alisson. They are two good finishes but there were defensive errors in the build-up to both.

He also scored versus Barcelona, cutting in from the left to slide the ball inside Marc-Andre Ter Stegen's near post, and away to Bayern, breaking through the lines to slip the ball into the net. It will be these goals, against high-end defences, that Liverpool will hope he can replicate regularly.

For a series of scrappy goals, Nunez seems to be adept at being in the right place at the right time, something backed up by his conversion rate of 43% - very high - and also his huge over-performance on his xG, something extremely difficult to maintain over time.

But Liverpool will look to his movement, often slipping unnoticed from centre-backs to score from close range, and think that particularly in the Champions League final a predator like that may have been extremely useful.

But for all that, the selection of finishes here from Nunez don't exactly point to a ready-made Premier League player. And for €100m, you might expect to get that.