Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool relevance is made plain as the surprising truth about Diogo Jota is revealed.

A forward naturally wants to score their first goal as soon as they can after joining a new team. Darwin Nunez will be eager to make an impact if he plays in Liverpool’s Community Shield match against Manchester City or first league game at Fulham.

For Jurgen Klopp, goal scorers making their debuts have been rare. Sadio Mane was the first, Mohamed Salah followed suit a year later, and when Virgil van Dijk made his Reds debut, he headed a memorable derby winner. But in the four and a half years since, nobody has scored on their debut.

However, just because you don’t score right away doesn’t indicate your career won’t be successful. This week marks the 17th anniversary of Peter Crouch’s signing with Liverpool. It took him 19 appearances before he scored in red. Despite this, he had a productive three-season career with the club, scoring 42 goals and winning the FA Cup.

One of his successors got going much quicker. When Diogo Jota scored his first goal for Liverpool to complete a 3-1 victory over Arsenal, he was playing as a substitute for the Reds for the second time. The Portuguese forward may surpass Crouch’s record for the club before the year is up after scoring 33 more goals since then.

Crouch and Jota do, however, share one trait in common, ranking among the top four Liverpool players for the number of games scored in without losing, despite the fact that their careers with the Reds began and most likely will end in opposite ways.

There will be men who experienced defeat before lengthier runs. Over six years and 200 goals after his debut, the Reds infamously didn’t lose a game in which Ian Rush scored until the 1987 League Cup final. It happened again right away in his subsequent game against Norwich. What are the rumors concerning buses?

It’s difficult to advance this far in a club career while being undamaged by setbacks. As opposed to winning the eighth game in which Salah scored, Liverpool lost the sixth game in which Mane scored (a dramatic 4-3 loss at Bournemouth).

Of course, the player’s record in this area is not completely his or her responsibility. The team that Crouch played on in 2005–06 set a club record for consecutive clean sheets, and the Reds of the previous season had the seventh-best goals-against-average rate in Liverpool’s history. In comparison to players from earlier eras, they were less likely to lose if they scored.

Nevertheless, during his tenure on Merseyside, Jota has delivered numerous significant blows. Liverpool has won 23 games in the last two seasons by precisely one goal. At least one of the pivotal goals was scored by thirteen different players, with Alisson Becker’s unquestionably the most memorable. However, only Mane can match Jota’s total of four in terms of volume.

In his first season with Liverpool, the Portugal international scored victories over Wolves, West Ham, and Sheffield United. He later added a victory over Nottingham Forest in March. This string of important goals is simply a continuation of a trend that has existed throughout his entire career.

Game-winning goals are a statistic available on Transfermarkt. They include both those who, traditionally speaking, determine a game’s outcome and those who ultimately determine the score. For instance, a player still scored the game-winning goal if they score the first goal in a 5-0 rout.

This category accounts for 45% of Jota’s goals, placing him far above of teammates Roberto Firmino (35%), Luis Diaz (33%), and Salah (33%). (30). This was amply demonstrated in the years 2021–2022, when Jota scored the first goal ten times while no other club member did so more than six times.

Jota’s major rival for a spot in Klopp’s lineup is Darwin Nunez, who has scored game-winning goals in 45 percent of his career goals. However, despite the fact that Diogo may have fallen down the Liverpool hierarchy over the past six months, his track record demonstrates that he remains the team’s best player for scoring pivotal goals.