Darwin Nunez once again showed that he is one the most chaotic football players, scoring for Liverpool after missing a sitter in their Champions League match with Ajax.
And his goal helped the Reds to a 3-0 victory against the Dutch giants which sealed Jurgen Klopp’s side’s place in the last-16.
After being absent from the weekend defeat by Nottingham Forest, the striker was called back to the side for the match at Amsterdam. Reds knew that they would be safe if they avoided defeat.
Ajax dominated the opening stages but but Mohamed Salah put Liverpool 1-0 up completely against the run of play with a delightful dinked finish from Jordan Henderson’s outside-of-the-boot cross.
It should have been 2-0 at the half-time break with Nunez scoring a magnificent goal.
Roberto Firmino squared the ball to the Uruguayan, who then had the goal at his mercy with the goalkeeper in no-man’s land.
But his shot crashed against a post where it would have been much easier to score.
“I can’t believe he’s missed this,” talkSPORT’s Tony Cascarino said. “Not even the goalkeeper to beat and he’s pinged it against the post!
“I feel for the guy, I missed some beautiful chances in my career, but that is as good as they get from Darwin Nunez.
“It’s an unbelievable miss. What a glorious chance.”
But it seemed whatever Jurgen Klopp said during the half-time break to lift the striker’s confidence did the trick, as he soon had the ball in the back of the net.
And it all came from what looked like another Nunez blunder – the frontman darting down the left flank but getting his cross all wrong as he fired the ball straight at the goalkeeper from a tight angle.
The Ajax glovesman could only parry the ball out for a corner, though, and Nunez did well to beat his marker and send Andy Robertson’s resulting set piece into the net with a thumping header.
Cascarino probably wasn’t the only one left stunned by the sudden change of fortunes.
He said: “Well, is Darwin Nunez going to be a player who can’t score the easy chances, but then goes and scores the hard ones?
“His boot even came off as stretched himself to get on the end of that cross!”
Liverpool got even more lucky when Harvey Elliott, a youngster, scored with a rasping drive to make it 3-1 and complete the scoring.
Nunez’s game was over in the 63rd minute when he was replaced by Curtis Jones, with the striker leaving the field and into a bear hug from Klopp and to the sound of boots and whistles from the opposition fans – always a good indicator that you’ve done your job.
“You can’t fault his energy and his desire,” added Cascarino.
“Obviously Darwin Nunez is an addition with a big fee to Liverpool and there’s a lot of expectation on him, but one thing you can see is that he’s always going to get chances because he’s a willing runner, he never stops trying to get on the end of situations.
“But there is one thing I’ve noticed, I saw that Nunez had his hands on his knees a few times, so I’m still just not convinced he’s up to speed physically for this Liverpool team.”
After the game man-of-the-match Robertson revealed what he told Nunez before his corner that led to the striker’s goal – and it appeared to work, even if he may not have understood him.
“Darwin was really angry at himself at half-time for missing that chance,” said the Scot.
“I don’t think he understood a word I said, but I told him I’d put a cross on his head for him to score!”
Nunez has had a rough start to life at the Anfield club with a red card early on and the inevitable comparisons with Man City’s Erling Haaland.
Although he has managed to score four goals and one assist so far, those numbers are not impressive when compared with Haaland who has scored 22 goals in all competitions.
Klopp was delighted Liverpool were through. The boss hailed his players after a tough match against Ajax.
“Qualifying for the knockout stages I think nobody ever should take for granted, it’s really difficult,” said the German.
“We did it again, which is a big achievement in itself, in a game which started off really tricky for us, and that makes the victory in the end even sweeter, because Ajax are a really good team, and we beat them twice [also winning 2-1 at Anfield in September].
“Today the first half an hour, maybe 35 minutes, they were the better team. That was a situation in which we were lucky, the other with a block, and then we scored our goal. You can see how the goal can open almost everything.
“We scored really wonderful goals, the first goal, the pass by Hendo, was exceptional, the second goal was a great cross from Robbo and Darwin takes on pretty much everybody, and then Harvey crowned his really good performance with a sensational finish.
“It was brilliant and the next situation was a sensational football moment, unfortunately we hit the post there. Then we scored the other two goals and controlled the game, which is really good, and now we are really happy about going to the last 16.”
