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Liverpool Echo

Sport

John Aldridge

Darwin Nunez has just made Man City's 'fear' of Liverpool even stronger

Darwin Nunez Liverpool Manchester City Bobby Duncan Ibrahima Konate Jurgen Klopp Roberto Firmino

Darwin Nunez's start to life as a Liverpool player has been impressive, with his performance in Saturday's Community Shield victory offering another insight into what we can expect to see more of in the coming months.

He is a bit different to what we’re used to and that could actually make us more unpredictable this season. Nunez plays like I did: on the shoulders of the centre-backs and trying to catch people out of position. If he is to be a success this season, Liverpool have to give him the required service. If that happens, he will score 20 plus league goals this season.

It was like me, if I didn’t get the service, I wouldn’t have been the player I was. Whenever I played, I was picked out by team-mates and this lad can do the same. Once you get into the box, you need to finish and he has proved he can do it before when playing against us and I’m pretty sure with us he will have more chances coming through.

I'm glad he was able to have a major say in Saturday's win over Manchester City as there had been some clueless rival supporters questioning him after a couple of substitute appearances in pre-season. Do people really think Klopp would spend the money we paid for Nunez on someone he didn’t trust? Not a chance. They haven’t just been watching him for one or two games, they will have been scouting him for a long time.

He did well against us for Benfica and with the best players around him, like he has now, he will be more of a handful. He only came on for 30 minutes on Saturday and he could have had two penalties and two goals against the best team, supposedly, in the league. That speaks for itself.

We get into a lot of situations in the box as a team, and he is a box player. Chances will drop for him and he will make things happen. When you’ve got deliveries coming in from Robertson, Tsimikas and Trent Alexander-Arnold – take it from me – he will get loads of opportunities from those lads. When balls have been going into the box when Bobby is playing, he has often been involved outside the box and helping with the team build-up. Nunez is a different option for us.

Community Shield is not a glorified friendly - City could feel the impact of this loss

With the money Man City have spent and the players they’ve got, you have to be at your best to beat them. You can’t make mistakes as they will punish you. Some of our players weren’t at 100 per cent at the weekend, but we still looked the sharper of the two sides.

We beat them in the semi-final of the FA Cup, drew with them twice in the league last season and we’ve just beaten them again. That’s four games unbeaten against City. Psychologically, that will help us. If we play to our potential this season, they know that we’re the only team they fear. They are not scared of anyone else. They are winning the league year in, year out – and they should with the money they have spent and the coach they have. I keep going back to it, what Liverpool have done is remarkable to keep up with City. Without Liverpool, this league would be painfully predictable and a poor product.

We were one point and one goal away from winning all four trophies last season and we’ve got to go for the lot again this year. We will have a strong squad to give us a good chance of reaching the domestic cup finals again, so hopefully we can replicate that and go one further in the other two competitions.

As for the other sides at the top of the table, Tottenham have got the best manager out of the other top six sides and seem to have spent wisely. Arsenal will be better. Can Manchester United improve? Well, they can’t get much worse than last year. It’s going to be interesting.

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