Neil Warnock has claimed that Liverpool would have beaten Manchester City last night if Erling Haaland was on their team.
The City striker scored his inevitable goal after just 10 minutes last night, but was otherwise marshalled well. Darwin Nunez on the other hand missed three presentable opportunities. And speaking on TalkSPORT today, Warnock claimed that Haaland would have scored all three.
“I thought to myself ‘if Liverpool had have had Haaland, they’d have won the game easily'” said the former manager.
“The chances that Nunez missed, I can’t believe the number of chances he missed. But I thought, ‘what a good sign for Liverpool, this is the best I’ve seen for a while this.’ I just thought with the players missing, they might try and get something at the back in January if they can. I just thought it was promising for Liverpool.”
Nunez left to rue missed chances
Nunez will certainly be waking up this morning wondering what might have been. All three of his chances were from around the same area of the penalty box, and all three really should have hit the back of the net.
The 23-year-old should have tested Stefan Ortega in the City goal at the very least. Instead, Nunez dragged each effort horribly wide.
To many Liverpool fans, this won’t have come as a surprise. We’ve seen Darwin miss plenty of decent chances in a Liverpool shirt already.
But still, after his two friendly goals last week and seven in his last 10 outings for the Reds, it’s fair to have expected better.
On the other hand, it isn’t as though they were complete sitters. Two of the three chances came as a result of him running in behind the City back-line. With the angle tightening, a shot into the corner had to be perfect.
Instead of just ensuring a shot went on target, the Uruguayan tried to be precise on each one. Had he simply put his foot through it, the outcome might have been different.
Perhaps Haaland would have done better, the 23-year-old is a goal machine after all. But even he missed a good opportunity early on in the game, skying an effort when through one-on-one with Caoimhin Kelleher. So, who’s to say he’d have done better here, too.
The misses will have only made Nunez even hungrier to improve his finishing and grab more goals for Liverpool. We can let him off with these ones, but it would be nice to see him being more clinical in the future.
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