LONDON — Switch off the alarms, turn the dials back from “panic” mode, Liverpool‘s title charge is back on track. After all, they had the Premier League‘s best get-out-of-jail-free card: send on Darwin Núñez.
With the fourth official still holding up the board showing there would be four minutes of additional time in a hectic game at Brentford, perhaps it was fitting that Liverpool’s most chaotic footballer was the only one able to keep his head. A game that seemed destined to finish goalless suddenly, somehow, ended up as a 2-0 win for Liverpool.
Overlooked by Arne Slot for a place in the starting XI with the No. 9 spot vacated by the injured Diogo Jota, Núñez had watched from the substitutes’ bench as his teammates showed incredible levels of profligacy in front of goal. By the end of the match, Liverpool had taken 37 shots at goal — their most in a game in almost nine years — but it was the last two from the Uruguay international that proved decisive.
Núñez would be the first to admit he’s had a poor season, restricted to just seven Premier League starts. These two goals were his first in the league since Nov. 9, and took his tally for the season to just four. It’s led to speculation that he could even be allowed to leave in this transfer window. Slot might be thinking again now.
But the latter stages of games are when Núñez comes alive. Eight of his 24 Premier League goals have been scored after the clock ticks past the 75th minute. While Núñez wasn’t signed to become Liverpool’s Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, a “super sub” able to come on and turn one point into three has always proved vital for title-winning teams. It’s a role Núñez appears perfectly suited to performing. Indeed, since he arrived in England in 2022-23, Núñez has been directly involved in more goals as a substitute than any other player (11 — seven goals, four assists).
“He scores goals,” Slot said of Núñez. “He works very hard for the team. He assists, but he’s in competition with a lot of good players. So that’s why he’s not every single game on the pitch.
“But I’m very happy with him, not only because he scored today two goals, that of course helps. But I’m very happy with the other performances he put in for us as well.”
Since the turn of the year, Liverpool have perhaps lacked the ruthless edge that saw them stack wins during the first half of the season. It was the case again during the first 45 minutes in west London where Liverpool did everything but put the ball in the back of Brentford’s net, racking up 19 attempts at goal and an xG of 1.54.
In the absence of Jota, the front-three of Cody Gakpo, Luis Díaz and Mohamed Salah menaced the hosts’ backline as they invented fresh ways to almost score a goal, each of them more ingenious than the last. Salah created five chances alone, one of them a perfectly weighted pass across goal to present Gakpo with a one-vs.-one that the Netherlands forward inexplicably missed.
Liverpool have emerged into the New Year as a different, slightly more panicked beast to the one that rounded off 2024 with a 5-0 demolition of West Ham United. That win at the London Stadium stretched their lead at the top to eight points and left fellow challengers Arsenal firmly in the rear-view mirror. In the 20 days between that and the game at Brentford, the only team Liverpool had managed to overcome were League Two relegation candidates Accrington Stanley in the FA Cup.
Virgil van Dijk dismissed the idea of a “crisis” following Tuesday’s 1-1 draw at Nottingham Forest and Slot must have been preparing himself to face similar questions as the full-time whistle approached.
“Nothing changed with us between now and the start of the season or the first half of the season,” Slot insisted after the game. “What you do see is that it’s at this moment of time, a bit harder for us to convert our chances into goals.
“That’s not only up to us, that’s also because teams throw themselves in front of every ball every time we get a chance. So many of the other teams try to prevent us from scoring. Always. All of them are in a low block.”
Whether by mistake of design, Slot’s team regularly built attacks that left just two Liverpool defenders back to cover the potential counters of Bryan Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa. It was an invitation Brentford tried to accept at every opportunity, with Mbeumo repeatedly marauding into the space vacated by Liverpool left-back Kostas Tsimikas.
Bees boss Thomas Frank continues to defy the odds, finding fresh gains to push on his team, who sit 11th after this loss. They had chances of their own, too, with 11 shots and Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson Becker forced into seven saves. The home team could have kept the three points themselves before Núñez’s late show.
Watching Mbeumo is rather like watching Salah. The rapid touches of the ball with the outside of the left foot as they create their favoured shooting angle on the corner of the box are remarkably clone-like.
But it looked like a game that had featured 48 shots — more than one every other minute — was going to finish goalless. But Núñez had other ideas.
With the time ticking beyond the 90-minute mark, a kindly break for Trent Alexander-Arnold saw the right-back fizz a ball across goal and Nunez diverted beyond Mark Flekken‘s desperate dive. And two minutes later it was 2-0 as Núñez worked some space in the box before rifling an effort into the roof of the net.
Núñez was mobbed in in front of the delirious away fans, well aware they may just born witness to a crucial moment in the title race.
