Liverpool’s players have been working hard during the close-season, with a number of Jurgen Klopp’s squad posting evidence of their summer workouts during their holidays.
Mohamed Salah has shared frequent updates, showing off his ever-muscular form
Jordan Henderson has also recently set tongues wagging with his own impressive conditioning.
It would seem Darwin Nunez has been just as busy behind the scenes, though in rather different circumstances.
The Uruguayan endured a mixed first-season at Anfield.
Nunez’s biggest issue during his first season with the Reds was limited grasp of the English language
Klopp in April
“Darwin is a player with a different skillset to all our other players. That’s good, that’s good,”
“He’s a real handful, he’s a machine, and he will score a lot of goals.
“He’s scored already a decent number of goals. That’s all fine but yes, of course, he is still adapting. His English is still not great, if existing at all. We are working on that massively.
“He has to learn English, that’s how it is. We can translate everything, but in training sessions we cannot have four languages and translate it. It’s a football language so it will help him massively.”
Ultimately Nunez spent the majority of the final two months of the season on the bench, the returning Diogo Jota and Luis Diaz were turned to in attack at his expense
Yet the evidence on the first day of pre-season training would suggest that Nunez has been working hard at improving his English during the summer break.
Back from summer break Nunez was first spotted conversing well with his manager as they exchanged pleasantries, before joking with Calvin Ramsay in the gym about the Scotland international’s recent dental work.
Nunez: “Wow! Wow, wow, wow!” he teased after the teenager showed off his new veneers. “I like them!”
Nunez was then filmed geeing up his team-mates, in English, out on the grass when undergoing the lactate test
Nunez:
“Finished holiday now, guys,” he said. “Come on!” much to the amusement of Gomez, impressed by his team-mate’s increased confidence when speaking English.
Nunez has at least given himself a better chance of success as he continues to fulfil his Klopp's demands. As he warned back in February - 'watch out!'
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