Sadio Mane has left Liverpool and Paul Merson has admitted that he is now worried for the Reds – and laid down the gauntlet to Darwin Nunez.
Liverpool’s summer business may already be done and dusted, at least when it comes to incomings for Jurgen Klopp.
The big signing is striker Nunez, who has arrived from Benfica in a total deal worth €100million (£86million).
That’s an enormous outlay for Liverpool and the expectation is that Nunez will immediately become a Premier League star for the Reds.
After 34 goals and four assists in 41 games last season, that’s a reasonable demand for the Uruguayan.
Sadio Mane has left Liverpool
The reason Liverpool spent so massively on Nunez is that they wanted to land a big replacement for Sadio Mane.
After six years at Liverpool, Mane has decided to leave Anfield to try something new with Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich.
Mane was outstanding for Liverpool, bagging 120 goals and 48 assists in 269 outings following a 2016 move from Southampton.
The Senegalese star was entering the final year of his Liverpool contract and now heads to Germany in search of more success.
This is obviously a huge loss for Liverpool and it will be difficult for Nunez to match his impact across so many years.
The encouragement will come from the fact that Luis Diaz was outstanding for Liverpool after arriving from Portugal in January.
Pundit Paul Merson has now told Sky Sports that he thinks Mane will be a ‘massive miss’ for Liverpool.
Merson believes that people are forgetting just how many big-game goals Mane scored for Liverpool.
The former Arsenal ace added that new signing Nunez simply has to settle into Premier League life quickly if he is going to replace Mane, believing that matching Luis Diaz’s impact will be hard for him.
“Massive miss, massive,” said Merson. “I worry for Liverpool, they’ve got an unbelievable manager but people forget that Mane was a big-game player who scored big goals. He wasn’t getting third, fourth and fifth in a 5-0 win, he’d get the winning goal, the goal that took the lead or the equaliser, they’re the goals I look for.”
“This lad Nunez has got to hit the ground running like Diaz and that doesn’t very rarely happen in the Premier League,” he added.
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