Darwin Nunez will spark an Anfield revolution, which will see Jurgen Klopp’s team transformed into a more flexible team who can change their style in an instant.
That is the message from the Liverpool boss, as he relishes a new look front line for the first time in five years. Klopp accepts that his go-to strike force, with Bobby Firmino dropping deep in a false nine role to create space for the genius of Mo Salah and Sadio Mane may have been the stuff of legend, but is now history.
Yet he believes the departure of Mane and arrival of Nunez, who will become the club’s record signing, will give him far more options…and Liverpool a tactical flexibility they previously lacked.
“So as much as we miss Sadio, of course we miss a world-class player - as much as we miss Divock (Origi) and Taki (Minamino) too, we need to refresh the efforts and the way we play,” he explained.
“That always depends on the qualities of the different players and they all have different qualities, so what do we do? I have an idea, but I don't want to say now that we do it like this as I am really open to what the boys offer and from there we go.
"We have a settled formation if you want and everyone knows how it is like this, but we have some real options to change the dynamics on the pitch and I think that makes sense for us."
After his first season at Anfield when he inherited Christian Benteke who was swiftly sold, Klopp has not operated with a traditional centre forward, preferring the industry and guile of Firmino in a deeper role.
Yet he is excited by the talents of Nunez, who has shown with Benfica in the Champions League he is a ruthless goalscorer at the highest level, and he argued that it would be stupid to try to change those qualities to force him to fit into a rigid tactical system.
“Do I want that Darwin plays like Bobby Firmino in the same position? No, not at all. It makes no sense. We are talking about a false nine and a nine. That is the difference,” he added. "We had two or three or four years where it was always clear before the pre-season we start up front with Sadio, Bobby and Mo. Now the door is open for pretty much everybody. That is what we have to use.
“That will make us completely difficult to analyse before the game, it would be a massive difference: him or him playing the position in the game, that is now really different (tactically). That is what I like about it. It will be really interesting. That is what we try to use, not this other pressure of we have to do this.
“We have enough games that they all will play but it is about how can we bring ourselves, all of us, in the situation that we make the extra yard which an amount of joy is pretty much not imaginable and that is what I am really looking forward to.”
Mane’s departure means Klopp has swapped one of the best wide players in the world, for a number nine who is regarded as one of the most promising young strikers in Europe.
Yet Klopp believes with Mane frequently operating as a number nine in his final six months at Anfield with the arrival of Luis Diaz, he has covered all his positions again with £85m signing Nunez: “Darwin is a No.9 who can play on the wing. If you compare with Sadio, he was a winger who could play in the No.9, since last year, so that's the difference.
"We have Luis, we have Fabio who can play on the wing as well, we have Diogo, he's definitely back and all these kinds of things. Bobby is back, for sure, Mo is still here, been here a long time and is good as well and we have Harvey, so we have so many different options up front.
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“We know exactly what we need and exactly what we want (from Nunez), we don't shoot [for] a player out there and go for [him] just because other teams want him. We have our clear ideas.”
Nunez was off the pace in the friendly against Manchester United on Tuesday, with Klopp admitting the striker’s “lungs were bursting” after his first few minutes. But he insisted he will take his time to integrate the Uruguay international in his side. “We don’t want to change Darwin in a week or two or three,” he said, “We have to adapt a bit around and if it will be in the first Premier League game or the second or the third or the fourth, I couldn’t care less.
“There is always a public discussion if we would have to do it and I hope we don’t have to, because that would mean we have a lot of injuries, then we can just work on it and we will do and we will see in training how quick that will go.”
