Mohamed Salah 's comments on his blossoming Liverpool partnership with Darwin Nunez have been backed up by the pair's shared Premier League record.
Nunez assisted Salah for the fourth time this season on a ferocious counter attack to kick-start the Reds' much-needed 2-0 victory over bitter rivals Everton in the Merseyside derby. The two Liverpool attackers combined well throughout Monday's game, taking their average chance creation for each another to one every 52 minutes, according to the statisticians at Opta.
That number beats any other duo in the Premier League, as Fulham pair Aleksandar Mitorvic and Andreas Pereira trail them in second with a chance created between them once every 63 minutes. Salah and Nunez's record is the best rate of any two players to have featured for more than 1,000 minutes in this season's top flight and explains the comments made by Monday's opening goalscorer.
"I train with Darwin so I know his stride," Salah told Sky Sports following the win. "I know how he likes to play, when we counter attack we just go. We did it a few times against Napoli, a few times against [Manchester] City, so I know how he plays, and I'm sure this guy is going to score a lot of goals. Once he just starts scoring them, he will score a lot of goals."
For much of his maiden term in English football, Nunez has been ridiculed by pundits and rival fans alike, mainly due to his failure to convert a series of gilt-edged opportunities. But the 23-year-old Uruguayan, who could cost Liverpool a club-record £85million following his summer transfer from Benfica, has shown his adeptness when it comes to creating chances for his team-mates.
Using his pace and power to bamboozle opposition defenders, and employing a full-throttle approach, Nunez regularly forges opportunities when the odds are against him. No one has profited more than Salah, too, as all four of the striker's assists since joining the Reds have come for the Egyptian king of Anfield.
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Salah will be hoping for more help from Nunez as Liverpool move towards the boiling point of what's so far been a wretched campaign. "It's big, it's huge for us," the 30-year-old added after beating Everton. "I think we had a perfect week to train and the players were so excited. We couldn't wait for the game to turn everything around. Hopefully that's the start.
Meanwhile, "relieved' manager Jurgen Klopp added: "That was the main feeling since the final whistle. Happy with the performance. It was necessary that we played tonight the game we wanted to play and not the game Everton wants to play.
"You cannot avoid that all the time but I think they didn't have an extremely high number of set-pieces, so with all the aggressiveness you have to show you have to make sure you don't overdo it because each set-piece is a massive threat and something they want to have, and I thought we did that really well."
Salah and Nunez will next lineup when the Reds make the journey to Newcastle this Saturday.