Arne Slot could be about to unleash the Darwin Nunez Liverpool have wanted all along

For Darwin Nunez, May 2024 will feel all too familiar.

The Liverpool striker has enjoyed, on paper at least, a breakthrough year at Anfield. With 31 goals, including 18 strikes in all competitions, he has already improved on his first campaign at the club, when he scored 15 goals and was involved in 19 in total.

And with two games left to end Jurgen Klopp’s season and reign, Nunez could improve on his tally. It could represent a quiet improvement, but as always with Nunez, his Liverpool career has rarely been quiet.

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Indeed, May looks similar to last year, when his playing time dropped and Klopp turned to more reliable and consistent players to see Liverpool’s season through. In turn, talk of Nunez’s form has grown as the striker’s seemingly polarizing nature leads to ongoing debate about his usefulness to the Reds.

Nunez’s absence from the Liverpool squad and the reaction to his poor form led to him removing all images of tomatoes from his Instagram profile and increasing speculation surrounding his future.

And with Klopp, often thought to be Nunez’s biggest supporter at Anfield, ready to leave the club when the curtain comes down on his reign after Liverpool host Wolves on May 19, the Uruguayan would be forgiven for thinking this thing is just as well. on Merseyside.

But he may want to stay a little longer and meet Klopp’s successor, Arne Slot.

Because the Dutchman seems to have an uncanny ability to improve and get the best out of all the strikers he has worked with during his managerial career so far.

Indeed, you only have to look at this season’s Eredivisie top scorers to see evidence of Slot’s work. Feyenoord’s top scorer this season, Mexico international Santiago Gimenez, who is third behind Vangelis Pavlidis and Luuk de Jong with 23 goals for the season.

It marks his career-best tally so far, and the numbers look more impressive when you consider that he has 26 goals in all competitions so far, with eight assists and after scoring 31 goals in 2023, he has surpassed most goals scored in the Eredivisie. a single calendar year – a record previously held by one Luis Suarez.

Before working with Slot, the Mexican had never managed to break double figures for goals in a season.

And with 23 goals last year, Gimenez has largely carried the burden for the Slot team over the past two years, but in his first campaign with Feyenoord, the Dutchman has largely relied on a very different group of players.

Luis Sinisterra, now of Bournemouth, top scored for Feyenoord with 23 goals before moving to Leeds. He has not surpassed that number before or since. Loanee Guus Til was two goals behind on 21 shots before returning to PSV where he scored 13 and 10 goals in the following two seasons. Slot also helped guide Bryan Linssen to a career-best 17 goals in all competitions.

It was a similar story at Slot’s previous club, AZ Alkmaar, where top scorers Oussama Idrissi (17 in 2019/20) and Myron Boadu (20 in 2019/20 and 15 in 2020/21) failed to rise to the same level in moves to Sevilla and Ajax as Idrissi (although he did hit seven in a loan spell back with Slot at Feyenoord last season past) and Monaco for Boadu.

Slot also oversaw the rise of attacking midfielder Teun Koopmeiners, whose goals of 16 and 17 in Slot’s two seasons with Alkmaar led to an £8m move to Atalanta, where he was part of the team that knocked Liverpool out of the Europa League this season. . The 26-year-old’s impressive form and 15 goals this season have since seen him linked with a move to the Reds.

With an attacking philosophy that seeks to combine Klopp’s high-pressing style with a slightly shorter passing game (Slot is a big admirer of Pep Guardiola), and instructions for the forwards and attacking midfielders to overload opponents in the final third, but limits centers from wider areas, Slot looks to create higher quality chances for his attackers.

So it’s no surprise that Slott’s forwards tend to score plenty of goals, and with an array of attacking talent at Liverpool to choose from, he will be backed to implement his philosophy at Anfield. Nunez, who has underperformed in the league at around -5 goals in terms of Premier League xG, may be best placed to continue his slow improvement at Liverpool rather than elsewhere in the coming period.