Salah: Stick or Twist?

Mohamed Salah’s mercurial form last season saw him finish not only as the Golden Boot winner and record goal-scorer in a 38-game season, but as the highest scoring player ever in a Fantasy Premier League season. In response, the powers that be slapped a 13-million-pound price tag on his head for the 2018/19 campaign. Many managers – over 2.4 million of them, in fact – did not think twice about splashing 13% of their budget on the Egyptian. After all, if he even came close to replicating last season’s numbers he would repay the investment in kind. So far, however, he does not look like the Salah of 2017/18. A number of squandered chances has left many people’s patience running thin, but the big question is this: stick or twist?

Let’s start by looking at the raw numbers. After seven games last season, Salah had netted four times in the league and assisted two further goals. Arsenal and Manchester City were the stand-out games in a relatively kind run; this allows for a near-direct comparison to this campaign, where Liverpool’s fixture list has thrown up tough clashes against Chelsea and Spurs in amongst some more routine matches. In these seven games, Salah has notched three goals and two assists: the numbers are nearly identical to last year. Of course, the missed chances last season could be explained away as a period of adaptation for Salah at his new club – with this excuse no longer available, it is natural to ask whether this relatively pedestrian start by Salah’s high standards is set to continue beyond the opening few games. However, it is at the very least reassuring for Salah owners that he is pretty much on par with the start he made to his record-breaking campaign.

It is also true that Salah’s squandering of big chances is nothing new. It was well-publicised, mostly by jealous opposition fans, that Mohamed Salah missed the most clear-cut chances out of anybody in the league last season – he was scoring for fun, but was missing his fair share too. This started from the very first game at Watford, where he probably should have had a debut hattrick; it is a product of Liverpool’s high-octane attacking play. There were fantasy managers at the time who were scared away by this wastefulness, but they were quickly made to rue it. A huge part of Salah’s appeal lies in his movement and unerring ability to get on the end of chances. The most important question is whether he has continued to do so this season. He undoubtedly has: the wastefulness that has so frustrated his owners in FPL is equally a sign that he is still doing everything right bar the finishing. This is little consolation to those who have seen a damning ‘4’ by the name of their captain for three of the last four weeks, but it should discourage these owners from selling. Every indication is that the goals will soon come.

This theory is backed up by the upturn in Liverpool’s fixtures in the near future. While it has not been the most taxing start ever faced, Klopp’s side have had the toughest fixtures of any of the top four so far. A difficulty calculation based on league positions puts Liverpool on seventy-five points, while Chelsea are on 60 and City sit on a mere 45.  After they face their biggest test yet at the weekend against Guardiola’s men, things start to look a lot more promising for Liverpool in terms of points potential. A run of Huddersfield, Cardiff, Arsenal, Fulham and Watford is about as good as it gets for Klopp’s side – each are set up with vulnerabilities just waiting to be exploited by Liverpool, and any one of those matches could plausibly end up with the Reds netting four or five. Even after this, a sequence of Watford, Everton, Burnley and Bournemouth awaits: the points potential here is perhaps slightly less huge, but the difference is marginal. If there was a time to sell Salah, it was surely three weeks ago rather than on the cusp of one of the kindest runs any top side will ever face.

However, there are of course valid concerns about hanging on to Salah. Most of them are the same ones that existed before a ball was even kicked – £13 million is a huge proportion of the budget, and there might well be better ways to spend it. The goalscoring form of Sadio Mane makes him a viable alternative for a saving of around 3 million, while Eden Hazard is scoring excellently for Chelsea. Kevin de Bruyne’s return will provide another premium option, and Raheem Sterling appears to be a regular in City’s setup once more after a relatively gradual reintroduction to the team following World Cup duty. Equally, sacrificing Salah for a more budget midfielder is one obvious way of accommodating both Kane and Aguero up front: experience teaches us that this is a pretty reliable front two. There is no easy answer, just as there was no one correct way of doing things right from the start: what is clear is that if Salah is to be rejected on the basis of his relative lack of value, it should not be a decision informed too heavily by his relatively steady start.

There is one fresh concern that has only arisen since the start of the new season, and which may be enough to tip the balance for some people in favour of getting rid of Salah. Rotation of Liverpool’s front three was already likely around European matches, particularly since they acquired more depth in the squad over the course of a positive summer. Specifically, Xherdan Shaqiri’s arrival from Stoke posed a minor risk to the reliability of Salah’s league minutes – this was only a slight concern, however, given that the man dubbed the Egyptian King seemed nigh-on undroppable based on his form from the end of the last campaign. This is no longer the case, as seen by Klopp’s withdrawal of Salah after 65 minutes against Chelsea. Perhaps even more significant is the remarkable renaissance of Daniel Sturridge. His recent form demands game time, and over the course of the kind run of league games he is bound to be handed some starts; this could be at the expense of any one of the front three, or else in a 4-2-3-1 that accommodates all of them, but there is no denying that his resurgence places more question marks than ever before over the safety of Salah’s consistent place in the side. On its own this concern is not great enough to prompt owners to sell, as Salah will surely continue to feature in the vast majority of games, but it is another thing to think about when weighing up the various pros and cons.

On the whole, it would be wise for Salah owners to give him at least a few more weeks. His underlying performances promise a glut of goals before too long, and a very kind run of fixtures might be precisely what is needed to get him back on the sort of form that saw him priced at £13 million in the first place. The fact that others are panic-selling only increases his appeal – Salah as a differential is an exciting prospect. There are many tempting ways of spending the savings from leaving him out, and some of these alternatives may end up being the better way forward, but even with all of his misses it is a fairly safe bet that Salah will ultimately deliver for those that keep him.

Check out my other recent pieces:
Ruben de la Red: https://footyanalyst.com/ruben-de-la-red-a-legends-career-cut-short/

Colossus weekly columns:
1. https://blog.colossusbets.com/7-points-in-7-days-5/

2. https://blog.colossusbets.com/james-martins-seven-points-in-seven-days-2

Liverpool 1-1 Chelsea: Post-Match Analysis

A familiar feeling descended upon Liverpool fans as Willian’s failed cross looped over Mignolet and into the back of the net. Once again, a combination of lack of composure and sheer bad luck had served to deny the hosts all three points; the end result was no doubt respectable, but the all-too-common circumstances in which the win slipped away make it hard to appreciate the value of a point. Nonetheless, there are certainly positives to be taken – Klopp’s men were five minutes away from getting a win against the champions while resting two of the team’s key players, suggesting that the squad is finally equipped to handle the congested winter fixture list. Moreover, the league table reveals that Liverpool remain firmly in the hunt for a Champions League spot – anything from second to sixth is realistically up for grabs, with the teams occupying those positions moving amongst themselves almost weekly, and this is likely to remain the case for essentially the entirety of the campaign.

The team selection for this big game certainly raised a few eyebrows. There was consensus that Mane and Firmino could benefit from a rest – Mane has twice been thrown back into action off the back of injuries, and Firmino’s role in Klopp’s team necessarily results in vast amounts of energy being expended. However, most would have expected the rotation options to be called upon in midweek against Sevilla; the upcoming game against Stoke would have provided an equally ample opportunity. Ultimately, though, it can only be a good thing that the manager now feels he has squad players who can realistically be trusted in even the most important games. One would hope, having spent forty-million pounds on Oxlade-Chamberlain and blocked a move away from Anfield for Sturridge, that there would be no complaints when the two actually get picked. The complaints that were voiced in respect of Oxlade-Chamberlain were quickly silenced – he started brightly, and continued in this vein throughout the match. He refused to allow Chelsea’s back line much time on the ball, and when he was able to win it back he used it well. Just as satisfying as his bursting runs were his decisions on occasion to shift the ball infield; it was his most mature, composed performance since joining from Arsenal. This was rewarded with an assist – he helped to finally break the deadlock midway through the second half by instinctively poking the ball through to Mo Salah, who did what he has been doing for fun ever since joining and stuck it in the back of the net.

Sturridge was not quite as emphatic in his silencing of the doubters – it wasn’t necessarily a bad performance, and indeed only an excellent Azpilicueta block denied him a goal to double the lead, but the absence of Firmino was marked. Salah was seldom found in space; he was forced to engineer it for himself, rather than relying on the movement of the centre-forward to open things up. On multiple occasions the Egyptian spun past Cahill with ease, only to find more bodies ready to get between him and the goal – Sturridge’s lack of intelligent movement is at least partly to blame for this. As ever, this comes with the disclaimer that Sturridge’s class remains beyond question – the questions about whether he can genuinely play a role in Klopp’s system, however, are becoming ever more pressing (excuse the pun).

The more immediately concerning problems were to be found in midfield. Milner, Henderson and Coutinho were deployed in a central three; this naturally took the form of a double-pivot in reality, with Coutinho drifting around further up the pitch. The protection offered to the defence was virtually non-existent – Henderson failed to follow up from his poor showing in Sevilla with a convincing display here, and was bypassed as if he wasn’t there on multiple occasions. Milner was even worse; Henderson is at least fairly reliable in possession, but the ex-City man subjected Liverpool to near-relentless pressure in certain spells through his failure to retain the ball. Coutinho, too, is not free of blame – in the first half he flatly refused to track back a lot of the time. This is obviously not his primary duty, but he should have taken some responsibility for limiting the space in which the Chelsea forwards could operate. Hazard in particular needed to be tracked a little more diligently – the Belgian was given the space to excel in the first half, and in fairness he looked exceptional. Indeed, Coutinho’s second half showing illustrated the importance of his defensive contributions; he started to get back a little more, and this coincided with significantly fewer chances for the visitors until the final twenty minutes.

It was in this final period that Liverpool were undone, as they had been against Sevilla. Unlike the Champions League game, it was not a complete self-destruction; Klopp’s side were undoubtedly guilty of backing off too much, and of abandoning much of the composure and discipline on the ball that they had exercised prior to scoring, but it was ultimately a mishit cross that gave Chelsea their breakthrough. It would be ridiculous to assign any genuine blame – the cross came in from Moreno’s side, but he was not really at fault. In fact, on the whole, the Spaniard responded excellently to his disastrous showing against his former club: he dealt admirably with what was at times a barrage down his left flank. It simply wasn’t to be for Liverpool. Such strokes of luck cannot be legislated for; whilst there are undoubtedly ways in which the team could have managed their lead more effectively, which absolutely need to be addressed going forward, their undoing was just a fluke in the end.

Where does this leave the team? It is a case of having to just move on, and do so quickly; the game against Stoke is looming on the horizon, and a win is important to get back on track following two disappointing draws. The players will surely take heart from the fact that the point has not left them in a dire position by any stretch of the imagination; the table accurately reflects that City have been dominant and the chasing pack have been much of a muchness. The battle for the top four will be a long one, and Liverpool will be encouraged by the fact that on most days they will not be faced with crosses that fly into the top corner.

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