LIVERPOOL need five big games from Mo Salah, then it should be: thank you and goodbye.
If Salah can rediscover his best form and help deliver the Premier League title, it would be a fitting farewell for an all-time Anfield great.
RexMo Salah needs to rediscover his form if Liverpool are to avoid more title race agony[/caption]
But that looks unlikely, and whatever happens, player and club should go their separate ways this summer.
For the first time in his seven-year spell with the Reds, Salah is showing real signs of ageing and a drop-off in form.
The hamstring injury that the 31-year-old picked up at the African Cup of Nations in January has hit him and Liverpool hard. Salah has already missed more Premier League games this season than in any previous campaign.
Before he went to AFCON, he had managed 14 goals and eight assists in 20 league appearances. Since the injury, he has three goals and one assist in seven games.
There are shades of when Liverpool blew a lead in the title race of 2018/19. Salah went nearly two months without a goal between February and April of 2019, and had 10 goal contributions in the last 18 games, compared to 20 in the first 20.
Even in 2021/22, when Salah spearheaded Liverpool’s bid for a Quadruple and was named Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year, he was less effective in the second half of the campaign.
But this season feels different.
When Salah was dropped for last weekend’s game at Fulham, it felt like Jurgen Klopp was finally acknowledging what a growing number of Liverpool fans had been feeling for a while.
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The Egyptian King is still the Reds’ top goalscorer and may yet deliver 20 or more league goals for the fifth time in seven seasons. His expected goals figure (17.27) is only slightly higher than his actual tally (17) and his actual assists (nine) are better than the xA of 8.84.
But despite his headline numbers remaining high, his overall performances have not always matched.
Salah has seemed to lose or give away the ball more than ever before and stats confirm he does it more than key players from the Reds’ title rivals.
Phil Foden and Bukayo Saka have both managed 14 goals and eight assists in the in the Premier League – fewer than Salah’s 17 and 9.
But Foden has completed 46.2 per cent of his attempted dribbles and been tackled 44 per cent of the time. Saka’s figures are 39 per cent success and 49.8 per cent tackled. Salah’s equivalent numbers are 34.33 and 64.3.
The Egyptian has been dispossessed overall 50 times, compared to Foden’s 38 and Saka’s 45, despite playing fewer minutes than either of the younger men.
In pass success, too, Salah lags behind Foden and Saka – 76.36 per cent to 88.85 per cent and 82.76 per cent, respectively.
Those statistics reflect in part the different way that Klopp asks his team to play, compared to the more patient philosophies of Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta.
Salah and Liverpool also missed Trent Alexander-Arnold down the right during the roving full-back’s own injury problems.
But too often this season Salah has either failed to pass or played the wrong ball. This has not only prevented the Reds from capitalising on attacking opportunities, but also affected their ability to control games and left them vulnerable to the counter.
It does feel ridiculous to be questioning Liverpool’s most prolific player of the Premier League era and the fifth highest goalscorer in club history.
But even legends have a shelf life and a price – just ask Robbie Fowler and Michael Owen.
Stars aligning
The stars are aligning for Salah to leave this summer, and not just because of Klopp’s own departure.
The Egyptian has only one year left on his £350,000 per week contract. He will want the same or more even to consider extending it.
And if he doesn’t, it will be Liverpool’s last chance to receive a fee for him.
The Reds laughed out of town a half-hearted £150m approach from Saudi club Al Ittihad last year.
Any Saudi offer this summer is unlikely to be as high. But capturing Salah, hailed as the greatest Muslim player of all time, would be such a coup for the Saudi Pro League, they would still be prepared to pay more than other suitors, such as Paris Saint-Germain.
Clearly, going into next season without the man who had been the top scorer for the previous seven, would be daunting for Liverpool and whoever their new boss is.
But given their relative strength in attack, would the Reds be better selling him and investing the fee, plus his wages, in new players in other areas of the pitch?
Don’t forget how well the Reds spent the £142m they received for Philippe Coutinho, bringing in Alisson Becker and Virgil Van Dijk and going on to become English, European and world champions.
Replacing Salah’s goals and assists is another matter, of course.
But Liverpool have turned potential into world-class performances before. In 2017, everyone was stunned when they paid an initial £34.3m for a Premier League flop.
His name? Mohamed Salah.
Michael Edwards, the man who masterminded the signing of Salah, the sale of Coutinho, and the recruitment of Alisson and Van Dijk, is back at Anfield.
Do he and Liverpool back themselves to make the break with Salah as they take the club into a new era?
Getty – ContributorLiverpool revinvested the massive Philippe Coutinho fee in Virgil Van Dijk and Alisson[/caption]
Our beautiful game is broken
By Dave Kidd
When Manchester United got lucky in their FA Cup semi-final, Antony’s first instinct was to goad heartbroken opponents Coventry. To rub their noses in the dirt.
Antony seems to be a vile individual but this isn’t really about Antony. Because Antony is merely a symptom of the hideous sickness within England’s top flight.
There is so much wrong.
After our elite clubs persuaded the FA to completely scrap Cup replays — which gave us Ronnie Radford and Ricky Villa and Ryan Giggs — without due recompense or reasoning with the rest of English football.
The previous day, after his Manchester City side had defeated Chelsea in the other FA Cup semi-final, Pep Guardiola whinged about the fixture scheduling of TV companies who effectively pay much of his £20m salary.
Up at Wolves, Guardiola’s friend and rival Mikel Arteta was playing the same sad song about fixture congestion, despite his Arsenal side having played two fewer games this season than Coventry — who don’t have £50m squad players to rotate with.
Chelsea, oh Chelsea. The one-time plaything of a Russian oligarch now owned by financially incontinent venture capitalists who have piddled £1billion on a squad of players who fight like weasels in a sack about who should bask in the personal glory of scoring the penalty that puts them 5-0 up against Everton.