Paul Merson has suggested that the arrival of Darwin Nunez at Liverpool has had a negative impact on the performances of Mo Salah.
The Egyptian King has become recognised as one of the world’s best players in recent seasons with his unbelievable scoring record and levels of consistency for the Reds.
With the £64m signing of Nunez this summer, Jurgen Klopp’s side is now regularly operating with an out-and-out striker for the first time since the German’s arrival back in 2015 and Merson believes it’s resulted in a ‘problem’ for the former Borussia Dortmund boss.
“Liverpool were at their absolute best when Salah could make his runs inside,” he told Sportskeeda (via Rousing The Kop). “The problem now is that he can’t do that anymore with Nunez occupying that space up front and might need to change his game.
“Klopp didn’t foresee this problem, and will need to find a way around it – it’s just a little blip for the side.”
Our new No. 27 scored his second goal in as many games for the Reds at Ibrox on Wednesday night and when Mo Salah entered the fray in the second half the Egyptian King netted a six-minute hat-trick to silence his doubters.
Although we can understand where Merson is coming from and many Liverpool supporters have claimed our No. 11 is operating a lot wider than usual recently, we believe it’s only a matter of time before Nunez is firing on all cylinders and all of his teammates are on the same wavelength.
You’d have every right to suggest that we’re experiencing bigger problems defensively rather than offensively as we’re scoring on a regular basis – we’ve failed to score just once this season and that was during the goalless Merseyside derby at Goodison Park at the beginning of September.
Klopp has somewhat of a selection dilemma at the top end of the pitch for Sunday’s huge clash with Manchester City.
Bobby Firmino and Nunez started at Ibrox and impressed while Diogo Jota and Salah were introduced from the bench and made sensational impacts.
It will be interesting to see the starting XI the German tactician opts for against the Citizens at the weekend – we’ll just have to wait and see!