‘We nearly killed him’ – Jurgen Klopp weighs in on Darwin Nunez’s first Liverpool appearance
Jurgen Klopp provided an assessment of Darwin Nunez’s first Liverpool appearance and has discussed how he plans to utilise the forward this season.
The Uruguay International arrived on Merseyside earlier this summer from Portuguese outfit SL Benfica and the German boss handed the 23-year-old his first minutes in a Liverpool shirt against Manchester United earlier today.
The Red Devils were already 3-0 up when the former Almeria man was introduced but Klopp feels that he saw plenty of positives from the forward’s 30-minute cameo in Bangkok.
“He is a number nine and he can play on the wing as well. We will see where he will play,” the former Borussia Dortmund boss said (as quoted by Metro).
“But what you could see is the boys were already searching for him.
“It was his third session (since arriving for pre-season training) and I think after the third sprint his lungs were nearly ready to explode.
“We nearly killed him these balls but he offered the runs and the boys wanted to pass the ball, that is for sure one of his strengths. He was dangerous, all these kinds of things.
“So Darwin, we will see. I think his profile is a proper number nine so that’s helpful with speed and aggression and using his body, all these kinds of things.”
He continued: “When you lose 4-0… if we talk about the game without the result, we have a lot of good things to talk about from my team.
“But if we do it like it should be, not forgetting the result, then we have to consider that we lost 4-0. So more things didn’t go too well because we made some mistakes – that’s normal. But we have to pay the price for that and that’s what we did tonight.”
The Reds will continue their pre season training in Asia and are preparing for Friday’s clash with Crystal Palace.
The results aren’t too important at the moment, what matters is that the lads get some much needed minutes in the tank to edge them closer to tip top condition ahead of the new campaign.
It was great to see our new No. 27 make his first appearance for the club, but he’ll be hoping to be on the right end of the result against Patrick Viera’s side later this week.
Our attack is going to look very different next season following the departure of Sadio Mane to Bayern Munich, but we’re confident that Nunez can provide a similar amount of firepower to ensure we’re as competitive as possible once again next term.
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