Mohamed Salah was absolutely unstoppable in the previous season. The Egyptian scored an unbelievable 32 league goals last season for Liverpool. Salah, together with Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino, were the one big reason Liverpool played so well and reached the final of the UEFA Champions League.
However, the hugely talented forward is failing to provide the same magic this year. Both Mane and Firmino are struggling too at the moment. After 8 Premier League appearances, Salah’s contribution to the team is only limited to 3 goals and just one assist. His first goal came against West Ham in Liverpool’s opening game with two more coming against Brighton and Southampton. In the other games, his performance has been unimpressive so far.
In the league match against Chelsea, he was even substituted by Jurgen Klopp to bring in Xherdan Shaqiri. Klopp later admitted that that game was not “Mo’s best game of his career, 100 percent.”
Klopp tried to downplay the substitution, still, it is hard to ignore the fact that Salah was substituted in an important Premier League match. In fact, it was the first time in over a year that Salah was substituted when the opposite team was ahead in a PL game.
It appears that the issue of Salah’s form is getting so highlighted because the Egyptian generated such a huge expectation among fans with his stunning debut performance for Liverpool. To expect the repetition of that performance this year looks unreasonable, still, there is no doubt that Salah’s current performances are well below the par of a player that he really is.
Just three goals from his 32 shots signal of a real problem here. He used to curl in beauties so easily to the corners of the goals. Now this season, he is not finding the nets with the majority of his shots either misfiring or being blocked by the keepers. There is a lack of sharpness in his games now. Maybe the disappointment of his early departure from the Champions League final affected his game, or maybe the performance of Egypt in the World Cup impacted him. Whatever the reason, we are seeing a dip in Salah’s performances this season.
Seeing that Salah is a hugely talented player, it is likely that he will improve his performances in the next few games. It is still too early in the season, and the Liverpool forward has not had time to rest after the previous season with the arrival of the World Cup.