Darwin Nunez stats: The reasons why €100m Liverpool deal seems too big

Paul Macdonald

• Updated: 23 May 2023 08:46 CDT
• 4 min read

Darwin Nunez has completed his Liverpool club record transfer for a fee of €75 million plus €25m in add-ons.

The deal makes the Uruguayan the most expensive signing in Liverpool's history, ahead of the transfers of Virgil van Dijk and Alisson, which were funded using Philippe Coutinho's sale to Barcelona.

Liverpool have once again returned to Portuguese football for talent after signing Luis Diaz in January - but that deal was significantly cheaper, at least initially - at around €43m plus €17m in add-ons.

It's a significant step Liverpool are taking. But do his underlying numbers justify such a huge fee?

Darwin Nunez transfer valuation

FootballTransfers has Nunez's market rate at €26m, so the jump to what Liverpool are about to pay is a significant one. But Benfica are excellent at extracting value from sales, and Nunez is coming off a truly wonderful season.

He struck 34 goals in just 32 starts, including six in the Champions League, therefore there's reason to think he can continue this form consistently at the highest level.

But he was playing with Almeria just two seasons ago and his numbers in 2020/21 with Benfica are not exactly stellar. It's not a huge sample size and this transfer feels distinctly more reactionary than Liverpool are used to doing.

Perhaps Sadio Mane's likely departure and the possibility that Mohamed Salah could follow suit are pushing Liverpool into a transfer fee that they might not feel particularly comfortable with, but feel they need to pay.

Darwin Nunez statistical overperformance

The key concern among Liverpool analysts are that Nunez's numbers - on the face of it - appear to rival anyone in Europe. But it's the underlying expected numbers that are more of a concern.

Nunez's expected goals per 90 in Liga Portugal is 0.57, yet he's scoring over a goal per game. There's only one player who can truly say he consistently over-performed his xG season upon season - Lionel Messi.

Nunez is scoring at almost double the rate we can reasonably expect him to, and at a lower standard, too. His chance conversion is 43% - again, the type of hot streak that would be difficult to consistently achieve.

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Liverpool are not stupid. They are one of the most innovative analytics teams in world football and will have debated over the relative merits of a number of data points which are very specifically driven to get the best out of players in their system.

But in many of those cases, they aren't paying €100m for the pleasure. Roberto Firmino, Mane, Salah, and even Diogo Jota were value purchases. This is an outright blockbuster amount of money to spend.