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Football

16th Jul 2022

Darwin Núñez responds to criticism after slow start to Liverpool career

Callum Boyle

Núñez has featured in both of Liverpool’s pre-season fixtures

Darwin Núñez has responded to criticism following his performances in Liverpool’s pre-season fixtures against Manchester United and Crystal Palace.

Núñez featured in the final 30 minutes of Liverpool’s 4-0 defeat against United and started the second half in their game against Palace, before being withdrawn half an hour into the game.

Núñez responds to his doubters on social media

Some fans appear to have already written off the Uruguay international though. In his unofficial debut, Núñez squandered a chance from close range. The forward also struggled against Palace, leading to someone making a compilation of all his errors from the game.

Earlier in the week, another 20-second video emerged of the ex-Benfica man missing a shot in a training session and it seems that Núñez is well aware of the pressure on his shoulders following his big-money move.

The 22-year-old posted a number of pictures to his Instagram and Twitter, captioning the former with a shush emoji and a man cupping his ears, while on Twitter he used the same pictures with the caption “resilience” with another shush emoji.

Darwin Núñez Liverpool

Jurgen Klopp defended his new signing

Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp is also well aware of the people writing Núñez off after two pre-season friendlies and insisted that they aren’t “taking it seriously.”

“I’m not worried at all,” he said. “The general judgement is absolutely nil interest [to us]. It will be like this, and we all know it.

“It’s kind of a game or a joke for some people to pick out some situations where a player’s not doing well. That’s only a game from [fans of] other clubs, which is normal. Our fans probably do [the same] with signings of Manchester United. We cannot take this seriously.”

Klopp instead chose to focus on the positives and said he was impressed by what he saw from his new striker and fellow new signing, Fabio Carvalho.

He said: “They were good, really good.

“But I don’t think it makes too much sense to talk after a football game about individual players, to be honest, because I’m not sure exactly but I think 32 players round about we used tonight and I liked all of them, what they did, to be honest.”

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