Virgil van Dijk stressed that he was joking, but when Liverpool’s captain said his advice for Darwin Nunez was to “not listen to you guys” there was a morsel of truth to take from his guidance.
Nunez has been copping it from all angles recently. From the stands opposition fans have been making brutal comparisons with him being an inferior Andy Carroll.
Arne Slot has cast doubt over his suitability for certain games, especially against teams determined to sit back and counterattack. And even after Saturday’s heroics he should be urged to avoid social media at all costs.
Yet the beauty of Nunez is that he consistently looks unaffected by what has just occurred.
No matter how loud the chants are, how weird the online criticism gets or how badly he has squandered his most recent chance in front of goal, he just keeps on going. And that perseverance brought a win on what could well be a defining afternoon in the title race.
Before Nunez side-footed home Trent Alexander-Arnold ’s 91st-minute cross it looked like Liverpool were heading for a fifth draw in eight games and six dropped points in 13 days.
Talk of a stroll towards the title suddenly became whispers of an implosion. By the time they returned home Saturday night, after Aston Villa’s draw at Arsenal, the lead was back to five points with a game in hand. Thanks to Nunez the narrowing advantage was back to being a procession.
“What he did today is what we need him to do, making an impact and being important with goals,” Van Dijk said after highlighting the need to block out the noise. Other than that he needs to keep working hard.”
And yet the £85m man remains an enigma, hard to decipher. From the stands he appears to flit in and out of matches, capable of going a chunk of time without featuring in the action before suddenly being central to chaos.
For those who see him up close in training every day, though, they see a hard worker deserving of a break. How much Liverpool deserved this win was open to debate. They produced a joint-club record 37 shots but the first 35 were at times overly hopeful, at other moments hopelessly executed. Just six were on target and Brentford goalkeeper Mark Flekken has had plenty of busier outings.
For Slot the advanced metrics point to a team playing as well as they had before the relatively sticky patch and he thinks teams have started sitting deeper to combat them. The low block is also why Slot thinks Nunez has not thrived.
But Van Dijk reflected on there being “nothing unexpected” about Brentford’s challenge while Elliott reckoned sides have copped on to how things have changed under Slot.
Join our new WhatsApp community and receive your daily dose of Mirror Football content. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don’t like our community, you can check out any time you like. If you’re curious, you can read our Privacy Notice.
Sky has slashed the price of its Essential TV and Sky Sports bundle in an unbeatable new deal that saves £192 and includes 1,400 live matches across the Premier League, EFL and more.
At Reach and across our entities we and our partners use information collected through cookies and other identifiers from your device to improve experience on our site, analyse how it is used and to show personalised advertising. You can opt out of the sale or sharing of your data, at any time clicking the “Do Not Sell or Share my Data” button at the bottom of the webpage. Please note that your preferences are browser specific. Use of our website and any of our services represents your acceptance of the use of cookies and consent to the practices described in our Privacy Notice and Cookie Notice.