By EFE
Dec 11, 2023, 2:59 PM EST
Darwin Núñez has now accumulated six consecutive Premier League games without scoring a single goal. The Uruguayan striker has had opportunities to break his streak, but he has suffered from a lack of aim that is beginning to be worrying:
The numbers in the Premier are worse than those of Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino, Sadio Mané and Luis Díaz.
When the dismemberment of the great Liverpool trident formed by Salah, Mané and Firmino began, Núñez, signed for 80 million from Benfica, arrived as a replacement for the Senegalese.
Darwin has scored only thirteen goals in 44 Premier games, and the worst of all is that he has done it with an xG (expected goals) of 23.47.
The xG statistic (which measures the 0 to 1 odds of a shot resulting in a goal) shows that he should have scored, according to the data, 23.47 goals, but he has only scored 13. That is, he has an xG of – 10.47.
This xG record is worse than that of the members of Liverpool’s past trident in their first 44 games for Liverpool and also worse than that of Luis Díaz, a footballer who arrived at Anfield a few months before Núñez to also replace the trident.
The comparison of Darwin Núñez with Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané
In Salah’s case, in his first 44 games, he scored 35 goals (including 32 in his first season), with an xG of 28.13. That is, their xG balance was +6.87. He scored almost seven goals more than what the statistics dictate.
Sadio Mané, who is now making his debut in Saudi Arabia, scored 19 goals in his first 44 games for Liverpool, with an xG of 15.24. In total, his xG was 3.76.
In reference to these two footballers, it must be taken into account that both already knew the league, an advantage over Darwinsince Salah debuted in his day with Chelsea, before leaving for Basel and Rome, while Mané played two years at Southampton.
Firmino, with no Premier experience when he arrived at Liverpool in 2015, scored 15 goals with an xG of 11.61 in his first 44 games. He beat the statistician by 4.39.
And finally there is Luis Díaz. The Colombian, surely the lowest scorer of the players analyzed, scored eleven goals in the first 44 games with an xG of 11.21. He scored what he had to score.
In addition to these data, Darwin is the second who shoots on goal the most. While Salah needed 82 shots to score those 35 goals, Darwin had shots on goal 53 times for his thirteen goals, more than Mané (38), Firmino (42) and Díaz (30).
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