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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
Sport
Paul Gorst

What Darwin Nunez did in Liverpool mixed zone as Andy Robertson makes Erling Haaland admission

Darwin Nunez's ears must have been burning as he made his way down one of the long corridors inside the Johan Cruyff ArenA on Wednesday night.

As Andy Robertson stopped to chat to the media in the post-match mixed zone, the conversation turned to Nunez, who had earlier scored his sixth goal in a Liverpool shirt in their 3-0 win over Ajax in Amsterdam.

And as Robertson detailed his thoughts on his relatively new team-mate, Nunez, complete with a beaming smile, came bounding past to quickly embrace the Scotland captain before the conversation about him continued. Like his second-half header, the striker's sense of timing was impeccable.

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It was the sort of night that encapsulated everything about the Reds' new £64m striker. Bullish, powerful and combative; Nunez found himself in a grapple with Ajax's resident strongman Calvin Bassey near the corner flag in what had been, up until that point, a fairly tepid opening by Jurgen Klopp's men.

As the two players wrestled for the ball, a palm ended up in Nunez's face which was the cue for him to fall to the ground in an incident that brought nothing but disdain from Spanish referee Jose Maria Sanchez.

Later in the half came what will surely be the Uruguayan's worst miss of the campaign. After having the ball slid across the face of goal by the intelligent, evergreen Roberto Firmino, Nunez, from all of six yards out, could only find the post with the goal at his mercy.

To his credit, though, the former Benfica man stuck to his task and got his reward shortly into the second half, heading down a Robertson corner to double Liverpool 's advantage and put them firmly on the path towards a sixth successive last-16 appearance under Klopp.

"He was really disappointed at half-time (after the miss) and we had to tell him not to beat himself up too much," Robertson said of Nunez. "Luckily, he reacted really well and at the start of the second half he got the goal and did really well.

"It is a big miss at the end of the first half but good strikers react. He was really disappointed at half-time but he used that disappointment to his advantage in terms of being angry and wanting to be in front of goal again and he did not shy away from that and scored an unbelievable header which is what good strikers do. It was good to bounce back, go again and get the goal he needed to help the team."

It's not been a perfect adaptation period for the 23-year-old Uruguayan. The language barrier is presenting some challenges as assistant boss Pep Lijnders and elite development coach Vitor Matos continue to communicate Klopp's ideas to him in Portuguese.

Nunez has at least been taken under the wing of the South American and Portugal contingent at the club in the shape of Firmino, Alisson, Fabinho and Diogo Jota, while Fabio Carvalho is also a help at times.

Robertson, though, says his colleague is getting to grips with life in England much better as he continues to go about justifying a fee that could eventually reach as much as a club-record £85m.

Robertson adds: "He has settled in really well. His English is getting better, he is getting settled with his family and things like that which always helps off the pitch. But on the pitch, he is settling in really well.

"There is a language barrier but you can see he is a nice guy. He is trying with his English and you respect that so much. He is asking us lots of questions and it will take time to get better but we are there to help him and he is a good guy.

"Obviously he had his three-game suspension which he has learned from and then had some wee niggles and is adjusting to the Premier League. His goals-to-minute ratio is very good. You can see the problems he can cause. He is a strong lad, can be powerful in the air and he took his goal really well."

Having invested so much into Project Nunez, both from a sporting and financial sense, Klopp has been intent on getting the best from player sources say he 'fell in love' with earlier this year. Injuries to key personnel both in midfield and in attack forced a tactical re-think, but it was one that eventually paid dividends at Ajax.

Many had expected Nunez to start out on the left of a front three that included Firmino and Mohamed Salah, but Klopp has been determined to get his striker into more central areas where he can really show what he can do. It was this train of thought that most inspired the decision to tweak the system to a diamond that allowed Firmino to play a more withdrawn role behind an exciting front two of Salah and Nunez.

"We obviously changed the system a little bit," Klopp told BT Sport. "We thought it would make sense. It was rather a diamond than a 4-3-3 so it was new again for the boys. But we didn't want to have Darwin on the wing, we wanted him more central and that's why we set it up slightly differently, so it's normal."

Comparisons with Manchester City's Erling Haaland were rife back in the summer months after both strikers arrived in the Premier League for big-money fees. Given the rivalry at the top end of the table between the respective clubs, debating the talents of the two powerful centre-forwards was an inevitability, even if now it is starting to become more apparent how different the two are, stylistically.

Haaland's unprecedented start to life in Manchester has seen him score 22 goals in all competitions. That, though, should not detract from the positive contributions of Nunez, who is now up to six for the Reds with four in as many starts.

"The only reason [Nunez and Haaland] are getting compared is because they play in the same position and moved in the same window," Robertson says. "It is not fair on anyone. If it was vice-versa, it would not be fair on Haaland either.

"So look, they are two incredible players and we are delighted to have Darwin here. He is still young which everyone forgets and in front of goal he has been really clinical. He has maybe not played as many minutes with the three-game ban, a couple of injuries and he is still adapting but he is getting there.

"Against Ajax, you could really see what his threats are and he caused them a lot of problems and they were already worried about him."

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