Why Liverpool want to make Darwin Nunez their record signing

There can be no faulting the ambition of Brighton, Newcastle United and West Ham United, all of whom made attempts to sign Darwin Nunez in the last year, although it is safe to say that their respective pursuits of the Benfica striker were always going to be long shots.

With respect to those three Premier League teams, it would not have taken a particularly extensive conversation for them to learn that Nunez has loftier ambitions and bigger dreams, so he will no doubt be delighted by the fact Liverpool are prepared to smash their transfer record to sign him.

The likes of Brighton and Newcastle might see Nunez as a player capable of taking them to the next level, but the view within the game is that the 22-year-old is already at that level — and that those teams needed him far more than he needed them.

Last summer, especially, when Brighton made a concerted effort to sign the Uruguayan, there was no suggestion that Nunez would be willing to sacrifice Champions League football in order to play for a team that had just finished 16th in the Premier League table. In short, it was a case of “thanks, but no thanks”.

Over the following season, Benfica and Nunez have been proven emphatically right in their decision to hold out for a bigger move to a bigger club. All of the evidence suggests he is far too good to be plugging away in mid-table or scrapping for the Europa League.

Nunez finished the campaign with 34 goals in 41 appearances in all competitions, and scored at least six more goals than any other player in the Portuguese top flight. In the Champions League, against some of the most fearsome opponents in world football, he was similarly ruthless: he found the net against Barcelona and Bayern Munich, and struck in both