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Photo by Catherine Ivill - AMA/Getty Images
The Liverpool manager was less concerned about Darwin Nuñez missing Liverpool’s best chance to win the game against Aston Villa than with his reaction.
Liverpool really should have won their match against Aston Villa on Wednesday night. They certainly created enough quality chances to do so, ending the game with around three expected goals while Villa created less than one despite the 2-2 final scoreline.
Their best and biggest chance of the night came 69 minutes in with the score level, as Darwin Nuñez was handed the ball on a platter with an open goal in front of him and blasted a clear cut chance worth between 0.75 and 0.89xG depending on the model (a penalty is generally considered worth 0.76xG) into the stratosphere.
Not only did Nuñez’ head drop following the goal, but the entire team performance did. Liverpool’s pass completion rate dropped below 70% and the Reds failed to put a single shot on target for the remainder of the match. It was, by any measure, very bad.
“I can accept the miss, especially from a player who scored two important goals against Brentford,” manager Arne Slot said following the match. “What is harder for me to accept is the behaviour after that chance. It was not the usual Darwin who works his arse off. He was too disappointed at missing that chance.
“It is always best to have [Wataru] Endo’s mindset. He keeps going and is always ready, but not many can do this. So it’s not about the chance it’s about the 20 minutes after that I want to talk to Darwin about. He can miss a chance but cannot miss out on work rate.”
If there’s a positive to be taken from Wednesday’s draw, it’s the fact that on the whole the Reds played well enough and created enough to win, making the result more disappointing than the performance—even accounting for the drop following Nuñez’ big miss.
Compared to their last two outings, a 2-2 draw at Everton and fortunate 2-1 beating of Wolves, Liverpool were better. If they’re to maintain their place at the top of the league table, though, they—individually and as a team—can’t react to the setback of a blown big chance the way they did Wednesday.
“That is the life of a striker,” Slot added. “He can miss, he can score, no problem at all. It’s part of the job that you sometimes miss when people expect you to score, but it is not part to then slow down the work rate and that is something we will have talk about.”
