Jurgen Klopp admits Darwin Nunez must 'calm down' & 'grow as a man'

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has challenged Darwin Nunez to work on his composure in front of goal to get himself out of his scoring slump.

An £85m signing during the summer, Nunez looked an instant hit as he scored in the Community Shield against Manchester City and chipped in with a goal and an assist in his Premier League debut against Fulham, but he has not scored since.

Nunez even recently suggested that he was struggling with the language barrier in England, insisting he cannot understand what Klopp is asking of him, but the Liverpool boss insisted no such problems are present.

"He's a kid as well, how they all are in moments. But he's a confident person as well but not a grown-up man already," he began. "We all know you can have a baby and still to grow as a man. That's clear but it's all fine.

"People told me there was the headline that, 'I actually don't understand a word of what he is saying.' Yeah, I know that. It was the same with Bobby Firmino and other players. Bobby, maybe a big part of Bobby's success was that he didn't understand a word what I said! Because he did everything right without understanding me. For Darwin it is now slightly different.

"We have a completely different situation, so he gets all the necessary information obviously – Spanish speaker in the coaching staff and in the team, so that's all fine. No, I understand that you ask. I would say it's all fine.

"It was not a perfect start; he has a three-game suspension. You cannot get rid of them and now this is still here. He's an aggressive player, he's emotional, but this should never happen again and these kinds of things. In between that there are a lot of things, and then the opponents go for him, but I really like his movements, that's really good, that's natural. It's something we didn't have in that way before and that's what I like and that's why I'm sure that everything will be fine.

"What is the worst situation what can happen when you come in as a striker into a new team? That your team is not playing exceptionally well because you depend on the things they bring to you, so that's happened. Now we can judge two things, but we cannot, we have to judge one thing in the moment when we perform consistently to our level and beyond. You need a striker to finish all the situations we create then. So, that's it."

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Klopp also revealed that Nunez is among the most prolific players in training and challenged the 23-year-old to find a way to carry that over to matches.

"I think he said himself he feels the pressure, these kinds of things," the boss added. "He has to calm himself down.

"You can see the movements are exceptional and if you would see him finishing in training you would think, 'My God.' But in the games obviously then a bit in a rush. He needs to calm down just in the moment to use his full range of finishing but it's not something – as a striker you just have to feel that. Then it will go from there.

"So, not to change, just to keep going actually."