Ian Wright says Jurgen Klopp should never sub off 24-year-old Liverpool player again

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Jurgen Klopp arguably got his team selection spot on for Liverpool’s draw against Manchester City on Sunday.

One or two eyebrows were raised when the manager opted to start Jarell Quansah at centre-back and Harvey Elliott instead of Mohamed Salah, for example. But it all worked out well, and the Reds should probably have won the game.

However, according to Arsenal legend Ian Wright, Klopp did make one mistake during the game. With 76 minutes on the clock, the Liverpool boss withdrew Darwin Nunez to the substitutes bench. According to Wright, this is something that Klopp should think about never doing again.

“With Nunez, I’d never take him off, especially at Anfield,” the pundit said on Sky Sports Monday Night Football yesterday. “I would just tighten him up in those situations. I’d let him watch those videos and say ‘look at this,’ Look what he can do.

“Speak to Harvey Elliott and say ‘when you get that ball, you don’t even need to look. Just put it over there.'”

Klopp urged to keep Nunez on

We’d ordinarily be in agreement with Wright on this. When he’s on the pitch, Nunez is often Liverpool’s most dangerous looking player. That was no different on Sunday.

But as he does occasionally, Darwin looked spent against City. With less than 15 minutes remaining, you could see that his race had been run.

Being a player that gives 100 per cent for the whole time he’s on the pitch, the 24-year-old is liable to run out of gas. At full pelt, Nunez is – in the words of Salah – ‘really, really fast.’ But once he starts to tire, that threat begins to diminish.

As a result, we don’t necessarily think it was the wrong call for Klopp to bring the Uruguayan off for Cody Gakpo for the last stretch of the match.

Perhaps Nunez would have provided a greater goal threat than the enigmatic Luis Diaz, but Lucho was also running like a Duracell bunny deep into stoppage time. His legs were still well and truly working.

As we’ve also seen at times throughout his Liverpool career so far, if you push Nunez too hard, he’ll break.

Although he’s never missed significant time through injury, the former Benfica striker does have a tendency to pick up niggles. Maybe the medical department had signalled not to give him the full 90 on the pitch on Sunday. You never know.

It’s better to have a fresh and hungry Nunez for the run-in rather than over play him and see the No.9 succumb to an injury.

Having been in a brilliant run of form, it was a shame Darwin couldn’t extend that in Liverpool’s biggest game of the season so far. But he’ll back again. Like Wright, we love having Nunez out on the pitch, but Jurgen knows what he’s doing.