Arne Slot has just DISCOVERED Liverpool's NEXT Roberto Firmino

In the prime of Jurgen Klopp's tenure at Liverpool, the famous trio of Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane led the Reds.

And while Salah and Mane earned most of the plaudits for the prolific goalscoring of one of the best front threes of all time, it was Firmino who was pulling the strings behind the scenes.

Working doggedly by setting up the two wingers, the Brazilian constantly put in a shift as the team's false nine striker, by winning duels and playing passes in behind, alongside finishing off chances - where he finally received some credit.

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But ever since Diogo Jota entered the fray, Liverpool started to utilise the striker role as an out-and-out number nine, letting the engine room midfield take over Firmino's duties.

This was further compacted when Liverpool's midfield maestros abandoned ship and Firmino moved on following the end of his contract, resulting in a completely different team which struggled physically.

Having focused most of their efforts on replenishing their midfield in the transfer market, Liverpool's engine room is back, and while the striker is free to be a striker, the profile of a Firmino-type player was never replaced, until now.

Nunez's frustrating season on the sidelines

When Liverpool brought in Darwin Nunez for a club record fee of £85million, many expected him to excel straight away. But while having shown glimpses from time to time, he still isn't considered to be Liverpool's main striker.

And having been sidelined for most of this season - much to his frustration when it came to his FC25 rating - Nunez has been left to work off the limited chances he's been given under Arne Slot.

In the beginning few games, he played 95 minutes in four substitute appearances against Brentford, Manchester United, Nottingham Forest and AC Milan, finding it difficult to really impact the game.

Following on from this he played in three consecutive starts against Bournemouth, West Ham and Bologna, scoring once and assisting once across the 253 minutes.

Amongst being sidelined for a substantial amount of the season with Uruguary too, following the ban he received by FIFA because of his involvement in the disturbing scenes at the Copa America in the summer, it's fair to say Nunez hasn't played much football.

And yet, regardless of the quality of the opposition, he was able to make an impact when given the reigns to start matches, slotting right into the space left by the rested Jota.

Nunez developing an all-round game

After playing every minute of Uruguay's two CONMEBOL World Cup qualifiers against Peru and Ecuador, Nunez was certainly fit and raring to go, but given the short turnaround between the end of the international break and the return of the Premier League, Nunez was benched.

However, in this afternoon's 2-1 win over Chelsea, his opportunity arose with Jota taken off for injury around 30 minutes.

Now, on the face of it, you may look at Nunez's stats from the game and think his threat was successfully nullified by Chelsea's defence. But you couldn't be more wrong.

Winning nine duels (more than any other player), Nunez focused on delivering the performance the team required - a dogged and determined one, to help the team grab the game by the scruff of the neck and secure three important points for Arne Slot.

Making no shots at goal to some may be a concern, but Liverpool only made eight in the entire game, with two of the five on-target, resulting in goals - so no shame there.

And so although Nunez was unable to leave the game with a goal contribution - a strikers' natural metric of success - he excelled in Liverpool's toughest challenge to date this season, leaving us all thinking, do Liverpool have Roberto Firmino reincarnated?

Where do we go from here?

Having only delivered one performance like this, the argument may be a little far-fetched. But given his limited chances, Nunez has certainly demonstrated that he can be a really useful player in this team.

As Mac Allister sat out of most of this game, Curtis Jones came into the fray after the birth of his first child earlier this week, and following an off-day for Dominik Szoboszlai, Jones filled in with a fantastic all-round display.

But in not having that natural duel winner beside Ryan Gravenberch, Nunez was able to drop deep and ensure the engine room didn't suddenly come to a halt against a Chelsea team that certainly had enough in their locker to punish the Reds today.

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And in the end, we won, so there can't be many complaints - despite Jota's injury, which we are still awaiting confirmation on.

However, the point is, a false-nine striker, a workhorse on the pitch can be really integral to grinding out performances, take Kai Havertz for example who had a difficult night for Arsenal in their 2-0 loss to Bournemouth.

The nitty-gritty stuff is key, and while Liverpool's engine room midfield has been on top of those duties so far, Nunez showed that Liverpool have a striker who can do exactly the same, adding a really important aspect for Slot's side moving forward.

As Jota will likely be out of contention for the club's midweek visit to RB Leipzig in the Champions League on Wednesday, Nunez will get a further opportunity to show us what he's got.

And while we all admire his chaotic nature in front of goal, it is certainly refreshing to see a different side to the Uruguayan, one which we will hopefully see develop throughout the season.