Van Dijk's advice to Liverpool new boy Nunez: 'Head down, work and be important'

Virgil van Dijk told Darwin Nunez to 'keep your head down, work and be important' for Liverpool after the striker's breakthrough performance against Manchester City.

Nunez came on with just under an hour of play in Saturday's Community Shield clash between the Premier League champions and FA Cup winners.

He had a significant impact, winning a penalty when his header hit Ruben Dias' arm to allow Liverpool to restore their lead through Mohamed Salah after Julian Alvarez canceled out Trent Alexander-Arnold's opener.

Nunez, signed from Benfica for a fee of £64m (€75m), with an additional £21.4m (€25m) potential, capped off a 3-3 triumph 1 for Jurgen Klopp's side with a late header in stoppage time.

The 23-year-old had been the target of criticism and teasing on social media after some sloppy performances at the start of pre-season, although Nunez scored four in a 5-0 rout of RB Leipzig last night. last week and has fitted in perfectly at Liverpool. attack at King Power Stadium.

Van Dijk has ignored criticism of his new team-mate, who the defender says is already an important player in the Liverpool squad after big club Sadio Mane left for Bayern Munich.

"He is important. He is difficult to play against and I hope he can show that for the rest of the season," Van Dijk told reporters.

"We all help him in some way and make sure he's comfortable and calm and working, and not concentrating on what the outside world has to say because everyone has to say something these days. So go for it, work and be important to the club.

"I don't speak Spanish, so I'm not telling him anything at the moment, but we have a lot of Spanish speakers in the team and I know for a fact that they help him, and I don't show him everything what's bothering him right now.

"But we'll see, everyone has something to say because there are so many platforms to do it. So it may hit you but it shouldn't. Just enjoy your game, enjoy the band, enjoy the club, because we are very lucky to be able to play for Liverpool."

It's a sentiment shared by midfielder Fabinho, who himself was slow to settle in the Premier League after leaving Monaco in 2018.

He said: "We saw that he improved from the first game of the pre-season. He did really well for the team.

"We had three weeks of training, so now he knows our way of playing a little bit. We are learning his way of playing a little bit more.

"We know he's quick, he's strong and he's a real number nine. He'll be in the box, it looks like the ball is following him, he'll always have the chance to score.

"So yeah, I think it's really important for him to score in the first official game in a Liverpool shirt. He'll be very important for us this season."

Liverpool's victory marked their first Community Shield triumph under Klopp, on the third request.

Including the occasions the trophy has been shared, only Manchester United (21) have lifted the trophy more times than the Reds (16), whose performance delivered a message to rivals City ahead of the new campaign.

Van Dijk, however, knows it would be foolish to use the Community Shield screen to predict how Liverpool's season might go.

"We can't look to the future," added the centre-back. "It's a boring answer but we knew that, for example, two years ago we had so many injuries, those are also part of football.

"We are focused game by game. Hopefully it will be a successful season, better than last season. We are excited to continue and we will see what the year has in store for us."