Darwin Nunez scored his first goal of the season in Liverpool’s 3-0 victory over Bournemouth.
Arne Slot confessed that he thought Darwin Nunez had made the wrong decision before breaking his Liverpool goal duck for the season.
The striker was handed a maiden start of the campaign against AFC Bournemouth. Nunez had been behind Diogo Jota in the pecking order in the opening five fixtures and was limited to substitute appearances.
But Nunez took his chance and displayed his quality by putting the gloss on Liverpool’s 3-0 victory at Anfield. In the 37th minute, he linked up with Mo Salah and burst into the Cherries’ box before curling home a sublime left-footed finish via the inside of the post.
Speaking at his post-match press conference, Slot admitted that he initially felt that Nunez should have taken on the ball further rather than going for goal – but was happy to be proven incorrect. The Liverpool head coach said: “My first instinct when he shot was: ‘Why does he shoot, why don’t you keep on dribbling?’ because he made the ball free and I think the defender was on the ground.
But then a fraction of a second later, when I saw the ball went in off the post, I was like: ‘OK, maybe you are a better football player than I was in the past’. Good choice from him.”Nunez signed for Liverpool from Benfica for a joint-record club fee of £75 million.
He’s had an up-and-down period during his Anfield career, showing all of his devastating prowess on occasions but has lacked consistency. Slot believes the way that can be remedied is through Nunez’s work-rate then Liverpool’s performances.The Dutchman added: “Consistency, you get by two things – work-rate and team performance.
If the team performance is not consistent, it’s so difficult for an individual to be consistent as well. We just have to create our habits day by day on the training ground and in the games to get this consistency. That’s what we try to do every day.
