I've mentioned this before but the notion that a 85m striker has to be told that he needs composure in front of goal is just delirious.
You can just tell when a player has that cold finisher calmness. Nunez has looked like having the exact opposite of that so far. He might be settling in in a number of ways, tactically and whatnot, but at the end of the day when in a 1v1 situation it's simply the player, the goal, and the keeper. He either has the skill to bury it or he doesn't. And increasingly it seems like he just doesn't have it.
Scary and sad situation building up for both team and player.
He got 34 goals in 41 games last season, the lad knows how to score goals.
He’s got 10 goals in 26 this season which is slightly worse than a 1 in 2 but a fair amount of those appearances have been for barely even 25mins. He put away a fair number of goals in our friendly matches too - yes they don’t count but it’s still matches played nonetheless.
He resembles Suarez’ time with us early on - arrived at the club with a good goal record but massively inconsistent in that first year with lots of chances missed.
With the way the team has been playing in general this season, mixed in with the good stuff he has shown so far and the fact he’s settling in to a new culture, new language etc, I think he can be given the benefit of the doubt. If he is like this next season I will get concerned but right now I’m not.
His first season at Benfica was like this and then he exploded in the 2nd year.
Logged