Jurgen Klopp: Darwin Núñez would have more goals if Liverpool had a better season

Jurgen Klopp insists striker Darwin Núñez would have scored many more goals if Liverpool had performed better this season.

The Uruguay international, signed from Benfica in the summer for a possible club record £84m, has found the net 15 times in his maiden campaign.

However, with virtually all of Klopp’s first-choice forwards available again, the 23-year-old has struggled to secure a place in the squad of late, starting just five times in the last 11 games in which he has scored just once.

But Klopp said the fault lay with the team, which has been wildly inconsistent leading up to its current six-game winning streak, and not with the player.

“There is much more to come. That’s clear. He needs time to settle down,” said the Liverpool coach.

“The most difficult thing for a striker is to reach a team that doesn’t fit in.

“Imagine if we played for us a good season, a season of 80 points or more, I definitely would have scored more goals.

“But it’s like now every situation we create and miss it is a higher level (of pressure).

“Mo Salah, in his best season when he scored about 40 goals, missed chances. That is normal. Erling Haaland missed opportunities. But they had a lot more than we realized in this period.

“Fifteen goals is absolutely fine. There are still three games left, so he can possibly increase that number as well.

“He had time to adapt at Benfica and there was no language problem, or less than here. We try to help him so that he can help us even more than he already has.”