Is Darwin Nunez an elite striker or ‘only a s*** Andy Carroll’? Amid Saudi curiosity, this looks like now or by no means after Arne Slot’s premeditated kick up the bottom, writes LEWIS STEELE

There is an obvious joke to be made about the fact Darwin Nunez took three attempts to get the correct wording on his post on X yesterday. Can’t even hit the target online, etc…

Two posts were swiftly deleted seconds after hitting the send button for not saying quite what he wanted, perhaps, or going too strong. Maybe a typo along the way, too, but he got there in the end and vowed to ‘never give up’.

If only he had the chance to press ‘delete’ in real life when he misses gilt-edged chances in defining games. According to Opta, Nunez misses 0.99 ‘big chances’ a game – more than anyone in the league although, to be fair, scoring machine Erling Haaland is on 0.95.

The Norwegian, who also joined in summer 2022, has scored 117 goals to Nunez’s 39 in that time, clearly getting over his bad misses by scoring the next chance. The problem with Nunez is that he lets his bad moments get to his head and fails to back up his good moments.

This is the Darwin Nunez Conundrum, season three, episode… well, we’ve lost count. In fact, you may well have read a very similar piece before: the Uruguay striker is at yet another crossroads and here we are, nearly three years at Liverpool with more questions than answers.

Is he an elite striker or, as home fans often taunt him with on his travels, ‘just a s*** Andy Carroll’? Is he the man for the big moments or one not cut out for this cut-throat level? Is he a well-rounded forward that contributes to the team or a square peg in a round hole?

Darwin Nunez misses 0.99 ‘big chances’ per game – more than anyone else in the league

The Uruguay striker missed a golden opportunity to give Liverpool the lead over Aston Villa 

Arne Slot has invested a lot of time working with Nunez to improve his all-round game

And what of his attitude and mindset? Well, that was the question posed by none other than Arne Slot on Thursday morning. ‘I will tell him that you can miss a chance but you cannot miss out on workrate,’ said the Liverpool boss.

‘That is the life of a striker, he will miss chances and score some. It is part of the job of a No 9, you miss when people expect you to score. It is not part of the job of a No 9 to slow down in workrate. And that is something we will talk about.’

This was a different side of Slot that we have not seen too much during his six months on these shores since joining from Feyenoord. In fact, this is the first time he has singled out a player for direct criticism.

Of course, he has sometimes mentioned parts of a player’s game they could improve or discussed individual mistakes in matches – but never has he been so forthcoming with his negative thoughts on someone.

Nunez was clearly hurting from the miss and Villa and, minutes after Slot’s press conference had finished, he posted about his feelings on X. And then again. And then again. Third time lucky, as they say, he finally got his words right.

His first two posts were more strongly worded, talking about how he sometimes feels the ‘best’ player and others feels a ‘failure’. Here is what he did say: ‘I wasn’t the best three weeks ago, and I’m not the worst now. If I fall, I get up. You’ll never see me give up.

‘I’m going to give it my all until the last day I’m here in Liverpool. Resilience!’

You feel sorry for Nunez and sources close to Liverpool stress that he is a hard-worker in training despite the outside perception. He wants to live up to his potential more than anyone, though Saudi Arabian interest in him makes one wonder if it is now or never for the No 9.

Despite a lack of coolness in front of goal, Nunez does appear to have improved under Slot

Erling Haaland misses a similar number of big chances but has a far superior goal record

The enigmatic Nunez is proving to be a real headache for Liverpool as they push for the title

Slot has invested a lot of time in recent weeks and months working with Nunez in terms of improving his all-round game. The signs in recent weeks have been that the Uruguayan, 25, is becoming a more complete striker. One miss does not change that.

But with six goals in 35 appearances this term – that’s one every 285 minutes on average – it is worrying that Slot is now clearly frustrated by Nunez’s attitude or workrate. Either that or he wants to give him a metaphoric kick up the backside.

To be fair, it might work. When fans do sing that aforementioned ‘s*** Andy Carroll’ chant, he does often respond by scoring and has often given it back in terms of gestures to the home fans, as seen at Brentford last month after his last-minute winner.

Slot’s words were clearly premeditated. He did not say them in the heat of the moment after the game, he had gone home, slept on it, driven into the training ground while getting riled up at talkSPORT all before he delivered his rallying cry to Nunez.

Will it work? Who knows. The most unpredictable player in the league continues to divide opinion, nearly three years in…