Darwin Nunez has played little more than an hour of football since joining Liverpool in the summer. Incredibly, despite that, the Uruguayan striker has received a degree of criticism for his performances against Manchester United and Crystal Palace.
Across both friendlies, the 23-year-old did not score and seemed to snatch at a couple of chances he was presented with. His finishing has since been scrutinised in some quarters, even though it is one of his main strengths under the radar.
Nunez proved his credentials last season for Benfica. Throughout the course of the campaign, his finishing was super efficient and he painted himself as one of the most deadly strikers around.
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In the Portuguese Primeira Liga, he converted 27.2% of his shots into goals, which placed him top of his division once compared with every other player to have posted at least 55 attempts on goal.
In fact, no player across Europe's top five leagues converted their shots into goals to a more efficient level than Nunez. He's proved to be a ruthless marksman over the course of the past year, capable of seizing moments whenever they emerge.
For perspective, Sadio Mane posted a conversion rate in the Premier League of around 18% last season, and Mohamed Salah averaged marginally less. Diogo Jota converted roughly 17% of his shots, which truly emphasises Nunez's figure of 27.2%.
The large majority of offensive players tend to convert around 15% to 20% of their shots into goals. Even the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Harry Kane tend to follow the theme.
Nunez also showed up as a master of hitting the target. He posted a total of 85 shots in the Primeira Liga, hitting the target with 44 of them which equates to 51.8%.
Again, for context, Salah, Mane, Jota and Luis Diaz all found the target with between 36.3% and 37.4% of their shots in the Premier League.
Across Europe's top five leagues, only a select few players took more than 50 shots and found the target with 50% or more of them: Neymar, Martin Terrier, Moussa Diaby, Memphis Depay, Francesco Caputo, Vinicius Junior, Wissam Ben Yedder, Juanmi and the player with the highest average, Son Heung-min.
Nunez has taken 10 penalties over the course of his career for Benfica and Almeria, scoring every one of them. Of his 22 non-penalty goals in the Portuguese top-flight last season, 13 of them were first-time finishes.
Overall, despite what early critics may try and say, Nunez looks like the ultimate marksman in the numbers. It should be a matter of time before he proves that for Liverpool.
The club's faith in data science and analytics is well known and based on the statistics attached to his game, supporters have nothing to be concerned about.
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