The away team secured all three points with a first-half goal from Eberechi Eze, which followed some careless defending from the Reds. The away team won handily on Merseyside.

Before the title run-in, Jurgen Klopp’s team has already given the edge to Arsenal and Manchester City, who are both ahead of Liverpool on the same number of games played.

They will be disappointed by the opportunity they lost against the Eagles, as they had 2.87 xG worth of scoring opportunities but were unable to get the ball past Dean Henderson.

The German manager had a lot of underwhelming performances all over the field, and Darwin Nunez, the center striker, is one player he now needs to drop from the starting lineup.

The former Benfica player was expected to lead the Reds’ line, but his inefficient play at the top of the pitch summed up the team’s dismal performance.

In the first half, he made his first significant contribution—for all the wrong reasons—when he bounded into the box, seemed to be one-on-one with Dean Henderson, but he was unable to get a shot off, and his attempt to pass across the box eluded Mohamed Salah, who was waiting for a tap-in.

The second one occurred early in the first half when Nunez blew a fantastic chance to tie the game at one. When the ball dropped to him in the box, he attempted to shoot straight at Henderson, even though it appeared like the shot would have gone in the net if it had gone either side of the goalkeeper.

The Uruguayan international played 66 minutes on the field, but as the table above shows, he did not do enough with the ball to get Liverpool back into the game. Three of his shots went wide and he generated zero chances.

Nunez had only 23 touches of the ball overall, 24 fewer than goalkeeper Alisson’s 47. This shows even more how little of an impact Nunez had on the game, since the Reds shot-stopper had a higher percentage of possession than Nunez.

The statistics cited above support GOAL reporter Tom Maston’s assessment of the wasteful dynamo, who had a terrible match rating of 3/10 and was characterized as playing “abysmal” when the ball came to him.

The 24-year-old attacker’s 25 missed “big chances” in 21 Premier League starts this season show that he is not a dependable player for Klopp at the top of the pitch.

He just isn’t ruthless enough in the area when he has the chance, and Liverpool paid a heavy price for it on Sunday when he missed a fantastic volley from close range.

Because of this, Klopp had to remove the striker from the starting lineup following his shocking performance against Palace. Diogo Jota will now likely start in the striker’s stead for the upcoming games.

In 13 league starts for the Reds in 2023–24, the Portugal international has nine goals and only three ‘great chances’ squandered. He could play in Nunez’s place the next time around.