Now or never for Darwin Nunez: Liverpool's polarising No.9 must make the most of starting opportunity or risk being sold next summer

Nunez is now in his third season at Anfield, and he's yet to prove himself worthy of Liverpool's No.9 shirt. For all his attributes (and the much-maligned Nunez has many), he still stands accused of missing far too many chances and the jury has been out so long at this stage we've entered mistrial territory.

He's demonstrated what he's capable of on several occasions - match-winning contributions at Newcastle and Nottingham Forest last season immediately spring to mind - but we've still not seen quite enough evidence to support Luis Suarez's claim that his compatriot is "one of the best centre-forwards in the world".

"I love how he plays," the Liverpool legend said, "and I love watching him."

Nunez is certainly box-office. Just like Suarez, one is never quite sure what he's going to do next. He will do something, though, and it will be entertaining. The issue is that it might not be positive, not from his own team's perspective at least.

Suarez was a similarly erratic character, of course, but he was a far more effective player. Indeed, the difference between the two former international team-mates is that while Suarez's temperament could always be questioned, his talent could not.

At Liverpool, he developed into a goal-scoring machine, a multi-talented forward capable of carrying an attack all on his own. Nunez has not yet come close to following suit - which is why this feels like a make-or-break period in his career.

Most Liverpool fans love Nunez. 'Captain Chaos' is a cult hero on the Kop. But patience is undeniably starting to wear thin. At Anfield, they always want to win major honours, and there are significant doubts over whether that is possible with Nunez as Liverpool's starting centre-forward. After all, he's only averaged a goal every three games for the Reds - the kind of ratio that the likes of Erling Haaland and Harry Kane would be embarrassed by.

Jurgen Klopp gave Nunez plenty of opportunities to lock down a starting berth, but he squandered them. Consequently, he was relegated to the role of reserve by the end of each of his first two seasons on Merseyside. He started the current campaign on the bench, too.

It was claimed during the summer that one of the first things new manager Arne Slot did was call Nunez to assure him that he would have a prominent role to play this season, and those reports made sense. The former Feyenoord coach had worked wonders with Santiago Gimenez, a striker with a similar set of skills, at De Kuip, so the hope was that Slot might be able to emulate Uruguay boss Marcelo Bielsa by figuring out how to get the best out of Nunez.

However, as Gus Poyet pointed out, Bielsa made it very clear that Nunez was his first-choice forward, whereas Slot put him on the bench.

"At Liverpool, I thought the first year was difficult," the former Uruguay and Chelsea midfielder told GOAL. "The second year, he started very well and I was thinking 'This is it' - but now he is back to uncertainty. I think he needs to make a decision [on his future]."

Just not yet, though.

Diogo Jota is quite clearly a superior goal-scorer to Nunez. In fact, with all due respect to the relentless Salah, the Portuguese is probably the best finisher at Liverpool, which explains why Slot charged Jota with spearheading his 4-2-3-1 formation.

"Darwin needs the same as all the others, work really hard and the goals will come," the Dutchman explained after Nunez received just 62 minutes of game-time during the first four Premier League matches of the season. "He will get his chance in the near future, we play a lot of games, and he is fitter and fitter and understands day by day what we want from him. But he's in competition with Diogo [Jota] who has done well."

However, while Jota can usually be counted on to convert chances, he sadly cannot be trusted to stay fit, and his latest injury has created an opening for his fellow forward.

After Jota was forced off in Sunday's massive Premier League clash with Chelsea, Nunez came on and turned in an excellent performance up front, impressing everyone with his work-rate, movement and link-up play. The only thing that he was missing was a goal, but he got one - just his second of the season - after standing in again for Jota in midweek.

It's telling that most Liverpool fans immediately feared that Nunez's first Champions League strike for nearly 18 months would be ruled out for offside, given the striker has developed quite the reputation for mistiming his runs since joining the Reds from Benfica in the summer of 2022. He's been portrayed as a modern-day Pippo Inzaghi - just with a far worse strike-rate.

In this particular instance, though, Nunez had arrived in the right place at precisely the right time to score the only goal of the game. Even more encouragingly, he was a constant threat at the Red Bull Arena. He saw a fine header tipped over the bar by Peter Gulacsi and was unlucky not to win a penalty. In short, he looked like a proper No.9.

However, we've been here before with Nunez. He's never failed to entertain and has enjoyed some productive spells over the past couple of years, but Liverpool want consistency - not chaos - from a starting striker.

With doubts still surrounding Jota's fitness, Nunez should start on Sunday against fellow title-challengers Arsenal, particularly as his pace would pose plenty of problems for a Gunners defence shorn of the services of the suspended William Saliba. He's got a real opportunity here to finally lock down a regular starting spot at Liverpool - and he needs to take it, because he's not going to get many more.

Make no mistake about it: if Nunez doesn't catch fire between now and the end of the season, he'll be sold in the summer. Liverpool literally cannot afford to have a £64 million ($79m) striker sitting on the bench.

In that sense, it really is a case of now or never for Nunez. He did exactly what Slot asked of him on Wednesday. It's imperative that he does so again on Sunday. And every other game after that...