Darwin Núñez's Right Foot and the Quest for Heung-min Son
Darwin Núñez broke his Liverpool goal drought with his weaker foot against Bournemouth. Yet Premier League data shows his right foot is up there among the best.
What is Darwin Núñez? An unstoppable bull in the china shop of opposition defences? A terrible finisher who got lucky in his final year at Benfica? A beautiful blend of power, pace and ponytail? A shit Andy Carroll?
More than anything, the Uruguayan forward is a very difficult player to assess fairly. Analytical wisdom will tell you that a player who is involved in so many high value chances is a must-have, that the dry spells will pass with a deluge of goals in the near future.
And even though it feels like the downpour hasn’t really happened, Núñez still scored 33 goals across his first two seasons with Liverpool. At the same age in the same period for the Reds, Roberto Firmino netted 21 times, while Luis Suárez bagged 21 in his first 18 months at the club. Sadio Mané was a year older than Darwin and had also accumulated 33 goals by the conclusion of his sophomore year at Anfield.
By the standards of many forwards, he’s been fine. For a club record transfer fee, a little underwhelming. We’re back at the heart of the problem of analysing Núñez already. It rarely takes long to get back here, with fog closing in around the thought process.
His run of form in the last six months has also been mystifying. Going into the recent game with Bournemouth, Darwin hadn’t scored in his last 549 minutes of playing time. As his previous strike was a goalkeeper clearance which cannoned in off his backside, we should really look back even further. So, what does he do against the Cherries? He lashes one in from an angle at 16 yards out with his weaker foot.
Because of course he does. Nothing in between a rebound and a world class finish will seemingly do for our Darwin.
Something of which I was already aware came back to mind when the Uruguayan scored a fabulous goal with his left foot; he has been better, at least statistically, with his weaker peg in the Premier League. According to data from Understat, Núñez has underperformed against expectation by approximately one goal with his left but a scarcely credible 10.9 with his stronger foot. Despite the low value opportunity he converted against Bournemouth, his chance quality has been higher on his left too.
It’s all part of the enigma. Yet despite squandering so many potential goals with his right foot, his finishing on that side hasn’t been that bad. Last month, the below chart was posted on Reddit. It shows how Premier League players have performed for xG and xG on target per shot with their right foot. A player on the left of the line through the middle of the graph has, on average, improved their chances of scoring via the quality of their finishing. Sure enough, Darwin is there.
He is next to Heung-min Son, long regarded in analytical circles as perhaps the best finisher the data era has seen. He has overachieved his underlying numbers by at least 4.5 goals in four of the last six completed campaigns, more times than any other player in Europe’s big five leagues in that period. If Timo Werner’s chances at Old Trafford had fallen to Son, Manchester United would’ve really been hammered last weekend.
Such things are always random. Across the four seasons covered in the graph, Son’s right foot has been worth 11.5 goals more than expected, per Understat. Yet the same source shows that Raheem Sterling, who is also near the Korean on the chart, is 4.3 below.
Thanks to Fotmob, we can examine Darwin’s right-footed shot maps from the last two league campaigns. The images on the left of the two show that he has taken a few too many efforts from within different postcodes to the net, which isn’t ideal. The shot placement pictures on the right then show quite a few ended up in the central area of the goal; research I undertook approaching 13 years ago found that shots in the lower central sixth of the goal are only converted 16 per cent of the time, roughly half the average of all efforts on target.
Perhaps deficiencies in the models fail to account for Darwin’s errors. Even so, if he’s hanging around Son’s finishing ball park according to xG on target then he can’t be doing that badly. Here’s a graph of Núñez’s league shots on target from the last two seasons that were taken with his right foot. As above, left of the split means his finishing added to the raw quality of the chance itself.
There are 61 goal attempts plotted on the chart, 58 where the finishing either improved the chance or made it worse. His score was 36 for, 22 against.
But only 10 shots on target saw the xG value plummet by at least half thanks to poor finishing. There are only three on the right side of the divide where the improvement wasn’t made by at least 50 per cent.
In some cases, that means only moving from 0.02 to 0.03, which is still unlikely to become a goal. Nonetheless, as you can see with the grey dots there are quite a few which moved a sizeable distance thanks to shot placement, only still to be saved by opposition goalkeepers. There are just two orange goal markers below the line, with one a short distance above, meaning fortunate finishes have been thin on the ground.
A thousand words later, we are not much nearer to knowing what Darwin Núñez is. ‘Unlucky’ mightn’t be the worst starting point.
Truly an Enigma this Darwin. Still feels like a matter of time before that deluge of goals starts pouring in. As always fabulous read!
If we had signed Nunez for half the price his stats would be seen more favourably. Yet his Benfica form was outstanding.the season before. A few years on that 30+ goal season was the blip and the current version of Nunez, a big chance misser, is his truer form. This is a very good piece.
I think Liverpool is not Benfica - stylistically, linguistically, technically, and physically. Nunez does not suit our style, he cannot speak good English, he is not technically consistent, but his aggression does offer an edge at times.
In reality, the problem is whether Nunez is a technical and consistent fit with Klopp and now Slot's Liverpool. I agree he has done a decent job but at potentially £85m he is not producing the expected results in Liverpool’s business model.
None of that is Nunez’s fault. I think he trains well, stays fit most of the time, and does not disappear in matches. He excites our fans and we love the perceived underdog. However, your numbers show he is not.
The problem is expectation. When Liverpool spent such a large amount of money we expected eventual success. Torres, Suarez, and Salah. All turnkey players with the Uruguayan's fee a sure fire bet on the next in line.
But the internal power struggle Klopp won makes Nunez a product of that period. The centre forward position was redefined by Liverpool, when we played Roberto Firmino as a false nine.
Brendon Rogers had to depart to get the best out of Firmino. The intriguing question is whether Jurgen Klopp had to depart to get the best out of Nunez. The signs against Bournemouth, even without a goal, were good.
Nunez is not going anywhere for want of a suitor willing to pay our price. He's still young, fast, improving, and playing under a manager known to mould talent. But will he ever be technically good enough?
Only time will tell. Six strikers. Three positions. Jota favoured. Gakpo improving. Diaz delivering. Salah undroppable. Chiesa the calculated bet. Nunez needs a good start to usurp Jota whether through form or fitness.
Nunez can do it. Gakpo can do it. Chiesa can do it. That is the reality of being a striker at Liverpool in 2024. Torres, Suarez, or Salah never faced this much challenge in their formative years.
Therefore Nunez has big challenges to overcome. He faces significant competition, a more technical style of football, and now being seen through the Edwards lens. Has he got the character and tools to succeed?
These stats show what Liverpool’s analysts probably know already. If you dig a bit deeper, as you have Beez, it shows Darwin Nunez is a better player than we think. Does that fit Liverpool now and the future? That's up to Arne Slot, Richard Hughes, and the transfer market.