Jurgen Klopp believes Darwin Nunez has ‘a lot more’ to show at Liverpool.
Nunez nears the end of a difficult debut season at Anfield where he struggled to adapt to his new surroundings and only scored 15 goals in all competitions.
That has led to suggestions the Uruguay international will be a poor fit for the Reds, having arrived from Benfica last summer on an initial £64 million deal.
But Klopp has backed Nunez to grown into his role over time and believes the player’s current tally is a respectible return given his side’s travails this term.
Asked what expectations he had for Nunez, the Liverpool manager replied: “A lot more, that’s clear.
“The most difficult thing for a striker is coming into the team which is not clicking.
“He’s scored 15 goals – imagine if we would have had for us in our standards a normal season.
“For me a good season is 70-80 or more points, he would have scored 20-odd goals [then] definitely. But each situation we created, if you miss it it’s much more highlighted.
“Mo Salah in his best season with 40-odd goals still missed chances. That’s normal. Erling Haaland missed chances, that’s how it is.
“But they had much more [chances] than we created in this period so that’s what we have to do, but 15 goals is absolutely fine.
“There’s still three games to go so possibly he can increase that number as well. But we spoke about it – he needs time to adapt.
“He had that at Benfica as well and there was no, or lesser at least, language issue.
“We work on everything with him. We try to help him so that he can help us even more than he did already.”