Can a 20-goal striker still be a ‘flop’?

Darwin Nunez is a goalscorer currently scoring goals for Liverpool, so why does he still look as though he could be a MASSIVE flop?

“His numbers are actually scary!” said Jamie Carragher as he likened Nunez to Fernando Torres, before fellow pundit Thierry Henry drew comparisons with Luis Suarez. The £85m man has scored seven goals for Liverpool this season, one every 106 minutes. ‘Scary’ is perhaps an adjective we should be reserving for Erling Haaland – he’s scored a goal every 57 minutes – but Nunez’s scoring rate would have pleased Torres or Suarez.

And yet, comparing Nunez with either of those Anfield predecessors feels like a big old stretch. Though it’s an admittedly small sample size, nothing Nunez has done in his three months in the Premier League suggests he will ever be able to outstrip or even match those supremely talented strikers, in the eyes of the neutral at least.

Despite being on course to score 2o-plus goals in his debut season, Nunez is a blank, a bad touch or a spurned chance away from social media flop status, and even for those of us willing to wait and reserve fair judgement, floppiness remains a tantalising possibility.

Since his equaliser against Fulham on the opening day – at which point it was thought he may still be able to hold a candle to Haaland – Nunez’s winner against West Ham has been the only goal that’s made a material difference to Liverpool, with the others coming in comfortable Champions League wins and the 3-2 defeat to Arsenal.

It’s a fine line of course, and this article would not have been written had Nunez scored the winner at Anfield on Saturday rather than Crysencio Summerville. But he didn’t. Instead he scored the second goal of a Champions League victory already claimed.

Still, it’s too early to judge, and even those who have cast aspersions over his Liverpool career thus far have been balanced by those who believe he’s proven himself to be a worthy signing. Certainly few could contend with him being a very watchable striker.

But the sort of strikers who could just as easily score an overhead kick as completely miss the ball and end in a crumpled heap don’t tend to be associated with those at the very highest echelons of European football; Christian Benteke left Liverpool a while ago now.

Nunez is always involved and has what’s often called the ‘gift’ (that can actually be taught) of being in the right place at the right time.

Sometimes he’s in the wrong place…