Darwin Nunez‘s departure to Al-Hilal brings an end to an association which some within Liverpool’s recruitment team saw as a gamble to begin with.
The transfer was facilitated by then-sporting director Julian Ward, whose connections in Portugal helped in the process of signing both Nunez from Benfica and Luis Diaz from Porto, but it was one driven by Jurgen Klopp and Pepijn Lijnders.
Nunez had scored in both legs of a Champions League quarter-final between Liverpool and Benfica two months before his switch to Merseyside – and the manager had seen enough.
Fittingly, given what was to come, the offside flag denied Nunez a hat-trick in the second leg at Anfield – including one stunning first-time finish on the move which defied his body shape – and Klopp was captivated by his relentlessness operating in the left channel.
But the Uruguayan joined at a time of uncertainty for Liverpool off the pitch, with Michael Edwards preparing for his departure and Ward beginning what proved to be a short-term role overseeing transfers.
It was there that a club-record transfer seemingly slipped through the cracks of an established recruitment policy which places great value in the data.
‘Are we going to change our style for him?’
The £85 million deal – of which Liverpool paid the majority due to various add-ons – was one of the last worked on by Ian Graham in his role as director of research.
Speaking to The Athletic last year, Graham conceded that Nunez’s performances against Klopp’s side “didn’t do him any harm in becoming a Liverpool player” and explained concerns that were flagged within his team of analysts.
“We went through the same data process for Nunez as with other players,” he recalled.
“I wanted to make sure that everyone knew what a big change it would be with Nunez. It was more, ‘are we sure we’re going to make the best use of him?’.”
While Liverpool considered Nunez among the best young strikers in Europe as they searched for a long-term successor to Roberto Firmino, the issue was more in whether he would fit the setup stylistically.
“The difficulty with Nunez was that he was a very different type of player to Firmino,” Graham continued.
“My questions were: ‘Are we going to change our style or formation for him? Is he a good enough player that it might be worth making those changes?’.
“It was something we had resisted for many years.”
Replacing Firmino, one of the best and most unique centre-forwards in Liverpool’s history, was clearly going to be a tough task, but Klopp saw fit to shift towards a more traditional No. 9 in Nunez.
It came during a revival of the out-and-out striker in the Premier League and no doubt Nunez was hampered by the comparisons with Erling Haaland – a player Liverpool coveted but deemed out of their budget given the overall spend required.
But while there were clear tactical tweaks it was evident that Klopp never truly built his side around Nunez and the onus was on him to adhere to the principles of his system.
Nunez’s xG outlier
Both Klopp and then Arne Slot expressed frustrations with Nunez’s work off the ball and most notably during his first season at the club that kept him from maintaining a first-choice starting role.
Firmino’s ability to drop deep and link play while creating for his wide forwards became so central to Liverpool’s success that it was no surprise that bringing in an entirely different profile brought teething issues.
An out-and-out No. 9 is measured in the goals he scores, and in terms of data analysis there is an emphasis on the underlying numbers in that regard. In other words, expected goals.
With that in mind, the evidence is stark: only once in his career has Nunez outperformed his xG, and that was his final season at Benfica, when he was judged to have scored 10.5 goals more than he should have.
Put simply, the form that convinced Klopp – and by extension, Liverpool – to sign him is a remarkable outlier in a career which otherwise pitches him as a striker worth 10-to-15 goal a season, rather than an £85 million sure thing.
For a time there was also an argument that Nunez was actually more useful starting from the left flank, but he was not assured of a starting place in that role given the availability of Diaz, Diogo Jota and later Cody Gakpo.
“I wouldn’t say that the data said no to Nunez. It’s more ‘if we sign this player we have to understand this is the role we’ve seen him be effective in and is there currently a slot for him in our squad?’,” was Graham’s conclusion.
“And if you’re spending a large amount of money on a player then he has to start. The worst thing you can do is buy a squad player and spend money that could be out there on the pitch.”
That is essentially what Liverpool ended up with: Nunez started only 76 of his 143 appearances for the club, coming off the bench 67 times and playing the full 90 minutes on 27 occasions.
In his final season he found himself behind Diaz, a natural left winger, and Jota in the pecking order up front and the decision to spend £79 million on Hugo Ekitike this summer made clear where Nunez stood.
Liverpool’s data-led recruitment is back
With Edwards and Ward back at the club, albeit in roles within Fenway Sports Group, and Richard Hughes appointed long-term sporting director, there has been a deliberate move back towards data-led recruitment.
That comes, too, with the distinction of Slot as head coach, rather than a traditional manager. The hierarchy is now clear.
One of the options pushed by Liverpool’s data team three years ago was Alexander Isak and it is telling that the club are pushing hard for the Swede as Nunez’s replacement.
It represents the acknowledgment of a lapse in their recruitment process.
While Klopp got many things right in his transformative time at Liverpool, pushing so heavily for a striker who clearly did not fit was not one of them.
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