I think anybody with any semblance of football recognition can see there is a good player there.
Under Phillips 1st season, there was hope he could turn it around in his 2nd season, but watching him in his 1st season it was still difficult to find positives. The hope was that he was coming back from an injury, so we needed to wait.
In Nunes 1st season, you can immediately see all the good qualities he has:
- Ball Carrying Ability and Dribbling to glide past players
- Decent eye for a creative pass, especially good at crossing
- Fairly tall and fast for his frame
What he needs to improve (and some of these he has improved already):
- Positioning (The Pep Factor), knowing where to be and when to pass, literally every player Pep buys has to go through this at some point as it's the most different thing to them.
In the last game I saw HUGE improvements in Nunes for this, he wasn't making blind runs, he had patience, held position, moved when he needed to.
- Strength on the ball and Challenging, he needs to be braver, and stronger in these situations, I think this is something that with coaching, time and more maturity can improve, because physically, he has the attribute to be good at this, it's just a mental barrier he has to get beyond.
In the last game we saw the downside of him being too weak and flimsy on the ball as he gave away the goal, he should be able to receive that pass, know there is someone on him, and shield it properly.
- Lowest on my list, he doesn't seem to have a great shot on him, this is probably the least likely to get better, I think most players usually just "have it", and rarely truly get much better at this. This is one I don't mind if he is slightly below average at.
With All This Said
I think his ultimate future is as a box to box CM (Gundogan role) to be in build up, and push up higher in transition.
But should probably get minutes also on the wings, simple to get minutes and use to the system.