Robbie Fowler says Darwin Nunez will learn from his red card shocker on his Anfield debut and has backed him to come back with a bang in the Merseyside derby on Saturday.
Liverpool's new £85m striker was given his marching orders for a headbutt in his home debut against Crystal Palace last month and has missed their last three games through suspension. But Fowler insists it has not exposed a weakness in his character that can be exploited and believes he will come back from the ban a wiser player against Everton.
“I’m not too bothered by his red card. It doesn’t show a ‘weakness’. It’s not that he can be easily wound up. If he is, then he’d have never survived playing in Uruguay. He’ll be fine,” said Fowler.
“Nunez has played in Uruguay, Spain and Portugal before he came to the Premier League. He’ll have been kicked black and blue. It was more the occasion and the atmosphere. It was his full debut, at Anfield, after a massive money move. He wanted to do well, show the fans, and he’d missed a couple of chances, so the emotion got the better of him. You learn swiftly. He’ll have been hurting missing the Manchester United game especially, and that will be the swiftest lesson of all. Top players hate being sidelined."
Nunez has never been sent off before in his career and has apologised for his behaviour. ”I am aware of the ugly attitude I had. I'm here to learn from my mistakes and it won't happen again,” he said. Fowler claimed he quickly learned from his own experience at being sent off after losing his rag in a Merseyside derby at a young age and reckons whatever Everton might have planned for Nunez will not work .
"You may need to sit down when you read this, but I was only sent off twice in my Premier League career. I’ll say it again. Two times. Both came when I was just a year younger than Darwin Nunez, which tells you a little about what he went through on his Anfield debut. For all his massive fee, he’s still so young, still a kid," explained Fowler, who scored 183 goals for the Reds in 369 appearances.
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"Yet looking back to the red cards I picked up, it’s not the inexperience as such, because you’re used to the treatment Nunez got from Joachim Andersen from a very young age as a top class striker. The red card I got for 'fighting' with David Unsworth was in the derby at Goodison when we were going for the title. Win and we would have gone top with four games to go.
"He kicked me, I got caught up in the emotion and lashed out, though I didn’t connect, and in truth it definitely didn’t warrant a sending off by the standards of those days. I got caught up in it, because the game was so important, the title was on the line. I was never sent off again in the Premier League after the age of 22."
