Trent Alexander-Arnold has admitted that Liverpool players were ‘excited’ to hear that the club were lining up Darwin Nunez this summer.
Speaking to Football Daily, Alexander-Arnold said that the squad knew Nunez would be a ‘special’ signing for Liverpool.
“When we played them we knew he was a special player. We knew he scores a lot of goals, gets himself in good positions, will work hard and fight for wins and that’s what we need. That’s what we expect when we bring players in, that’s the club’s mentality and I think he’ll slot in,” said the right-back.
“Over the years there’s been a few signings where the club’s linked to them and us players get excited and we’re like ‘yeah, he’ll work for us’ and this is definitely one of them.”
Nunez takes centre-stage after faultless audition
What’s become clear since Liverpool sealed the arrival of Nunez is just how big an impression he made when playing against them last season.
From Jurgen Klopp, to Virgil Van Dijk, to Joel Matip. A number of those associated with Liverpool have spoken publicly about just how good they thought Darwin was over the course of the Champions League quarter-final.
Back in March before the games took place, we wrote about how the tie could be an audition for Nunez. We never expected that it would be an audition to quite the extent that it ultimately turned out to be, though.
All things considered, it appears that those two games really swung the balance in the 23-year-old’s favour.
There aren’t many players who you feel could massively improve this Liverpool squad. That Klopp’s charges feel so strongly about Nunez bodes well for how he’ll do at Anfield.
Still, there are no guarantees. The Uruguayan has already come in for criticism during his short spell at Liverpool so far. Quite ludicrously, he is being judged across four pre-season games totalling around 150 minutes. He’s scored four goals in that time, by the way.
The trolls won’t dampen the Liverpool players, or fans, enthusiasm for the signing though. Liverpool have a great recent track-record in the transfer market. Let’s hope that Trent is right, and Nunez is the latest in that long list of success stories.