Glad I Got It Totally Wrong About Salah and Núñez

Liverpool are outstripping my expectations in this season of transition

I'm not usually in a rush to get Liverpool players out the door, and mostly I tend to try and understand the decisions (and thinking) of the Liverpool manager, coaching staff, analysts and owners rather than look to condemn or pretend I know better.

I have strong opinions, obviously, but mostly I try to temper them due to having less information at my disposal than the people making decisions; although I'll occasionally have a rant.

But in the summer, I said I was tempted to offload Darwin Núñez, in part as I thought cash was needed for a rebuild; and in part as his clear potential was being hampered by issues like failing to learn English and a lack of pressing, looking awkward in the system; and that he cost a lot of money for a player who had become a sub.

It helps that Núñez has now learnt English and is more adept at pressing; two things that were possible he could do, but also, what if he didn't?

But for all the continued open-goal misses, he's improved this season overall. It can also be seen in his form for Uruguay.

(I also worried about his social media consumption and how, as the butt of many cruel viral jokes and videos, it could not be good for his mental health, just as it's not good for most people in the public eye; and he seems to have stopped focusing on that, too. You will never prove bad-faith doubters wrong; just delay their next batch of barbs by a week or two.)

Núñez had bags of potential, but as last season progressed, looked increasingly lost.

And Mo Salah – I fully expected him to join the Saudi exodus, and I feared his best days were behind him.

£140m or more for a slightly-slowing 31-year-old who has seemingly lost the ability to curl in those slightly deeper/wider shots that bolstered his tally (as well as starting to miss the few penalties he got to take) seemed too good to refuse. And I assumed he wanted to go, given the wages he would be offered would perhaps 10x his salary at Liverpool, and that would surely tempt him and his high-profile agent.

But I did say, unless he wanted to stay. And he wanted to stay.

Okay, so wanting to stay is one thing. Núñez working harder on things is also one thing.

The other thing, for each – would it work?

Núñez is doing what peak-Núñez can do, albeit he's still got some way to go to mature into a calmer finisher on the end of the explosive play, in the way that Salah did when at his fastest between 2017 and 2022.

But Salah has reinvented himself, or been reinvented.

My fears about his dwindling pace, especially when pitted against increasingly younger, faster full-backs, has been mitigated by a new style of play, aided and abetted by the simply magnificent and deceptively rapid Dominik Szoboszlai, a front-three player for his country and a midfield dynamo for Liverpool. (While Núñez can add to the threat.)

As a digression, the two goals Szoboszlai scored for Hungary this international break reminded me of John Barnes's glorious brace against QPR in 1987, when I first realised just how good the ex-Watford man was: solo effort dribbling past players before a superb finish, then a one-two and, receiving the ball back, lifting it high into the net with a kind of scooped finish.

Neither was quite as balletic as Barnes’, with Barnes’ first against QPR including perhaps the best shifting of balance and acceleration I’ve ever seen in a player of his size.

(It’s still my favourite Liverpool goal, aside from those, like Divock Origi’s against Barcelona, that had great significance and an insane euphoric rush. But what it did signify was that the new team that season was special.)

The brief match highlights above start with a very VAR-like moment, too, which would later be repeated in the FA Cup final of that season (to cost Liverpool the trophy), and also includes an accusation of the opposition manager on the morning of the game that “an awful lot of penalties get given to Liverpool at Anfield”, that persists, incorrectly, to this day – albeit then Liverpool won a penalty. But I digress from my digression. (And weirdly, it’s a very modern ‘unnatural position’ handball, with the TV just about clear enough to make it out on freeze-frame.)

However, it raises another memory and comparison, in how Kenny Dalglish, managing that amazing side, had years earlier dropped back from a striker to a creative no.10 as he moved into his 30s, to lay on chance after chance for the super-fast, lean young striker.

These days, of course, there are no no.10s in most teams, and certainly not a Jürgen Klopp side. (And in Dalglish's side in 1987, it was another master in the role, Peter Beardsley, who left Liverpool, aged 30 in 1991, with another 227 Premier League games and 74 goals ahead of him, as a player let go far too soon, with some proper flops brought in around that time.)

But this is partly what Salah is doing: dropping back to feed balls, only from wide, to Szoboszlai who goes outside him, and Núñez, who runs wide, ahead of him.

In this shot below, I would now call this exact patch of grass the New Salah Zone. And while here he turns back, you can see two runs beyond him being made, and Darwin Núñez could offer a third in the manner he often does (he’s stopping the run here as Salah has turned back).

And what's interesting is that even on a breakaway against Nottingham Forest, Salah, leading the charge, is now thinking of holding onto the ball instead of trying to outrun defenders – to let Szoboszlai not only make up 25-yards distance having played the initial pass on halfway, but then fly beyond. Looking at this still image, you’d expect Salah to want to go it alone when he gets the ball.

In the past, Salah would likely have taken the ball and tried to run the full-back, but this is a sign of his evolution.

And even here, Salah can easily be available again the pull-back, if required, and on again for any keeper fumble – both by just moving slightly to his left, into the box; but Núñez converts the firm cross.

So Salah is a kind of false winger, wide-no.10, who in second phases of play arrives in the box like a no.8. It’s almost a free role, but within three different options, rather than the freedom to wander anywhere he wants.

But I wanted to look more at his finishing positions, given that I think he's now best as a kind of “open play penalty taker” in that his finishes should be from within a certain distance, and not beyond certain angles. Plus, a look at what Salah choosing to stay has done for morale.

The rest of this article is for paying Main Hub subscribers only.