Liverpool’s stars are all now traveling back to resume the club season after the international break, with the Reds set to face a tough test in Everton at the weekend. It’s a test Liverpool has enough to overcome, but will be challenged by the early kick-off time and some of the players returning late from South America.
Up until Liverpool’s defeat at Tottenham, everything had gone as Jürgen Klopp would have wanted. However, with the loss at Spurs, the Reds have lost a bit of momentum and that was evident in the last game before the international break, with Liverpool dropping more points at Brighton.
The star of that game was undoubtedly Mohamed Salah, who has been brilliant as usual this season, dominating the opposition and scoring goals for fun as usual. He has very much justified Liverpool’s decision not to give into the temptation of lucrative offers from Saudi Arabia, and has shown he is very much still a talisman in this side.
But for once, it hasn’t just been the Egyptian who has hogged the headlines for Liverpool. Klopp is building his Liverpool 2.0 and in it, this season fans are starting to see the birth of a potential new star ready to take over from Salah, who it could be argued is in better form this season.
At the moment, Darwin Núñez has 11 goal contributions for club and country this season, which is one better than Salah’s 10 goal contributions. If you distill those numbers down to per minutes played, the Uruguayan’s accomplishment is even better under the lens.
Núñez averages a goal contribution every 70 minutes for Liverpool and Uruguay this season, whereas Salah ‘only’ averages a goal or assist every 102 minutes for club and country. This is a bit of a regression for the Egyptian, who last season averaged a goal contribution every 93.5 minutes. Meanwhile, for Núñez this is a return to form, the same kind of averages that he was posting at Benfica prior to arriving at Anfield, where he averaged a goal contribution every 74 minutes in his last season.
In Salah’s best-ever season during the 2017/18 campaign at Liverpool, he averaged a goal contribution every 68.6 minutes. That’s now close to what Núñez is averaging for Liverpool, with the Uruguayan’s return at club level in this campaign being at every 67.2 minutes.
During the international break, the Uruguayan was once again in inspired form, playing a key role in helping his country record a historic win over Brazil for the first time in 22 years. It led Real Madrid midfielder Federico Valverde to comment ‘this is insane’ under Núñez’s Instagram post of his highlight reel from the match, clearly having been left mesmerized by the Liverpool forward’s performance.
It’s only natural for someone to eventually succeed Salah, and based on the way Núñez has started ‘better’ than the Egyptian in terms of his goal contributions per minutes spent on the pitch, we could be witnessing a changing of the guard at Anfield this season. For years, Salah has worn the crown as King of the Kop, but now a new prince is ready to succeed him on the throne.
