New Delhi: Darwin Nunez made a big-money move to Liverpool from Benfica earlier in the summer, coming in as a direct replacement for the outgoing Sadio Mane. The Uruguayan may not have scored in his first two appearances in pre-season but he silenced the doubters by netting four times in last week’s 5-0 win over RB Leipzig.
THIS suggests Darwin Nunez’s injury
The 23-year-old has been wearing protection on his knee, leading to concerns that he is struggling with an issue ahead of the new season. The towering striker has undergone two past knee surgeries.
An Injury expert tells about a potential problem when reacting to an official club image showing some strapping around the striker’s right knee.
“It could just be that it helps to alleviate some of the load coming through that patellar tendon. It is going to be high intensity, high workload. Sometimes you can get a bit of irritation and overload around the knee. Sometimes that strapping can help alleviate and manage that. It can also help the kneecap track properly and offset any irritation in there. It’s not massive. It’s more just to guide that patellar. If there is a slight muscular imbalance, that patellar might not track as it should. It’s not so much an injury, it’s more of a pain. This is used to stop that.”
Nunez is going into the new campaign, not at 100 percent and perhaps even feeling the effects of Jurgen Klopp’s high-intensity style already.
With Diogo Jota injured with a hamstring injury, it looks increasingly likely that Roberto Firmino will lead the line away to Fulham, alongside Mohamed Salah and Luis Diaz, with Nunez being used as an impact substitute, to begin with.
