Liverpool striker Darwin Nunez is now fully on the exit ramp ahead of the summer as his agent makes calls around Europe, according to reports.
The Reds are having a brilliant campaign with Arne Slot guiding Liverpool to top of the Premier League table after 28 games played.
It would take a terrible collapse from here for the Reds not to win the Premier League with closest rivals Arsenal – who have a game in hand – 13 points adrift of the Merseysiders.
The only hiccup Liverpool have had this season has been in the FA Cup when they lost to Championship strugglers Plymouth Argyle.
Slot has had to deal with some off-field issues too with Mohamed Salah, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Virgil van Dijk all out of contract in the summer and their futures still up in the air.
There is some confidence that Salah and Van Dijk will still sign new deals, while Alexander-Arnold has been consistently linked with a transfer to Real Madrid.
And other player that now looks likely to leave in the summer transfer window is Nunez after the Uruguay international has fallen out of favour under Slot.
Reports in Spain claim that Nunez is now ‘closer’ to a move to Atletico Madrid than before after he ‘fully decided that he will leave Liverpool in the summer’.
After making just seven Premier League starts under Slot, Nunez ‘is looking for an exit from Liverpool’ with his ‘great defender’ Jurgen Klopp leaving in the summer.
Nunez ‘has received offers from Saudi Arabia and Italy, although his priority would be to land in Spain’ with Barcelona receiving a ‘call’ – but the Catalan giants ‘have immediately rejected this operation’.
Atletico Madrid ‘have shown interest’ in the Liverpool striker and the Uruguayan ‘could end up at the Civitas Metropolitano, where they will presumably lose Antoine Griezmann.’
Former Liverpool striker Michael Owen thinks it’s a case of “what you see is what you get now” from Nunez with the striker unlikely to improve much.
Owen said: “In Darwin Nunez’s first season, I was 50/50 over whether he was going to be an incredible player or someone who is always going to be a frustrating player who could do more.
“There’s a very good player, of course, but not somebody that’s going to now be ranked among the world’s elite strikers. It’s frustrating because you see parts of his game that you just think, wow, that’s just incredible.
“But then you see parts of his game that you think, wow, that should have been taught to you when he was 10 or 12. That’s the strange thing about his game.”
Owen added: “He does things that you can’t teach people and then he doesn’t do things that should be very teachable. My assessment now is that what you see is what you get.
“I’ve been open-minded for a good while thinking this kid could be developing into something incredible. Now I don’t think that will be the case.
“He is a very good player, a big asset for Liverpool, but I just think what you see is what you get now.”