Michael Owen was critical of Mohamed Salah and Darwin Nunez for their missed chances during Liverpool’s 1-1 draw at Luton Town on Sunday.
Jurgen Klopp’s side needed a stoppage-time Luis Diaz equaliser to save themselves from an embarrassing defeat against the newly-promoted side.
This isn’t a case of Liverpool not creating the chances, they had plenty of them, especially Darwin Nunez who lacked that cutting edge in the final third.
Michael Owen told Premier League Productions (05/11/23 at 6:50 pm) that the 24-year-old ‘needs to learn’ the simple finish at the far post after watching his effort, which turned out to be offside, blaze over the bar, but he didn’t know it at the time.
The former England striker actually thought there were ‘two’ big misses in the space of a few seconds because Darwin Nunez only blazed over the bar after Mohamed Salah cushioned down a header into his path.
But according to Michael Owen, the Egypt star actually attempted an effort on goal and got it horribly wrong, which then led to his teammate taking it one step further and making matters worse.
Darwin Nunez and Mohamed Salah
“That is a huge miss from Mo Salah,” said Owen. “If that didn’t go to Darwin Nunez and instead went wide, then we would have said ‘wow, that’s the miss of the game’.
“But then to have two in the space of half a second. We spoke about it earlier on in the programme. A lot of the time, your only danger as a centre forward when the ball is coming across like that is hitting the ball over the bar.
“There is no one near you. The only thing you have to think of is to keep it down. Smoother it. You don’t need to hit it cleanly. You can scuff it. Just smother it and keep it down.
“It’s a finish he probably needs to learn. There are some gaps in his game. But that was a massive chance for him.”
Liverpool still have a long way to go
In terms of returning to the Champions League, you would imagine that Klopp and his players are showing enough that they will return to the big time next season.
It’s just a case of challenging for the Premier League title and if they have enough to push Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City.
At the end of the day, Liverpool were the last time to dethrone the now-Treble winners.
But, at the end of the day, that was a different Liverpool side to the one that is going out to compete today.
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