Would You Sell Darwin Núñez?

Arsenal are reportedly interested in signing Darwin Núñez. Should Liverpool cut their losses this summer?

There has been talk in the last day or so that Arsenal are looking to sign Darwin Núñez from Liverpool. It hasn’t come from anyone worth listening to, at least as far as I have seen, so I would not expect this deal to happen.

But after the slightly underwhelming two years the Uruguayan has spent with the Reds, it feels plausible that the club would consider the possibility. As todays edition of The Transfer Flow (which arrived while I was pondering this idea) noted, “if we assume the Reds have paid the maximum [for Núñez, £85m], they’ll need a fee of £51m this window to break even for PSR.”

Hence the poll at the top. Cast your vote, then read on. There are distinct pros and cons to the argument.

Sell

Where Darwin is chaos, Arne Slot is control. Liverpool set a club pass accuracy record for a 20 year period against Brentford last weekend. It’s hard to see how Núñez fits into that structure.

Josh Williams recently wrote on Distance Covered that “last season, no Liverpool player posted a lower pass completion than [Núñez’s] 69.2 per cent.” In his one pre-season outing, his sole appearance of longer than 18 minutes for the Reds’ new head coach, his nine successful passes from 15 attempts gave him a hit rate of 60 per cent.

Darwin is also likely to face increased competition for playing time, with a deal for Federico Chiesa looking all-but confirmed. While the Italian’s low transfer fee suggests it isn’t essential he features in every match, he will have been signed with Slot’s blessing, unlike Núñez.

That has to count for something. And when it comes to the Uruguayan, we simply must talk about his finishing.

Were Liverpool won over to Darwin’s charms by a hot streak of output destined never to be repeated? Add Núñez’s last three seasons together and you get a net performance against xG of -0.1. But rather than two clubs getting an average finisher, he soared sky high for Benfica before plumbing some pretty unpleasant depths for the Reds.

This sort of thing can happen to anyone. Mohamed Salah has been below par in four of the last six campaigns, and a goal below expectation across that period as a whole. But being average is fine when you take shots worth around 26 expected goals per season. If Núñez could even just meet the mark of his underlying numbers, never mind exceed it, this wouldn’t be an issue.

So:

Keep

Despite his issues in front of goal, Darwin scored 18 times last season and set up 13 goals for his colleagues. Search for Liverpool players with at least a baker’s dozen of each and there haven’t been many. None of them were as young as Núñez when doing so either.

(Luis Suárez should be here for 2013/14 but FBRef can’t pick up his FA Cup assists)

At this point, the Darwin sceptics - religious people in the 19th Century? - will note that our hero notched seven goals and five assists in the shallower waters of the domestic cups and Europa League last term. While that is true, he also put up 0.4 non-penalty goals and 0.4 assists per 90 across a sample of over 2,000 minutes in the Premier League. This is even rarer air for a Liverpool player.

There’s some rounding errors here, but you get the idea

The with/without data suggests the team performs better in Núñez’s presence too. How much of it is truly down to any individual player is of course questionable in a sport like football.

But Liverpool have had 23 players who’ve featured for at least 5,400 minutes across the last six years, and only four of them have better with/without data than Darwin for both goal difference and xG difference.

(Virgil van Dijk, Naby Keïta, Luis Díaz and Diogo Jota, before you write in to ask).

This influence is most keenly felt within the sphere of Opta-defined big chances, those golden opportunities where it’s reasonable to expect the attacker to score. Núñez pushes the Reds up from the very, very good strata and into the elite bracket.

Across his first two years in England, Liverpool averaged 3.5 big chances per 90 in all competitions. Since 2011/12, only the Manchester City side of 2019/20 has generated more in a single Premier League season.

Perhaps most interestingly with an eye on the future, the Uruguay international had a better record for Benfica when they played a 4-2-3-1 formation compared with when they didn’t. The former is only a sample of 780 minutes, but Darwin saw his creativity and goals rates rise. Could Slot’s system bring the best out of him?

So:

Conclusion

James Pearce has tweeted that the arrival of Chiesa “won't lead to any senior attackers leaving #LFC before Friday's deadline,” so this debate looks to be moot.

Nonetheless, I’m interested in your thoughts. For what it’s worth, I would keep him. With no pressure to sell due to his contract situation, it feels right to give a player of his talent at least one season to work with the new head coach. Betteridge’s law of headlines? You’ve done it again.

But would I be heartbroken in the surprising event that he left this week? Probably not. Perhaps John Henry was right to ask: What do you think they're smoking over there at Emirates?