This summer everyone has fallen at the feet of Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah and quite rightly so as the Egyptian international had a fantastic season up front, but the worry with Salah is, was it simply a one off?
When Salah joined Liverpool for almost £40m last summer from Roma the transfer hardly made the headlines. This was in part because he had already played in the Premier League for Chelsea where he had failed to impress. At the London club Jose Mourinho quickly dismissed the player and he played just 3 games in the same season that Chelsea went on to win the league. He was put on loan to Fiorentina and then Roma and Salah’s chances of making an impact in the Premier League looked lost.
That was until Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp saw potential in him as a classic centre forward and brought him back from Roma. Klopp’s decision paid dividends with Salah scoring 32 goals in the league and 44 goals in all competitions. It was a remarkable debut season and reminded one of Fernando Torres’ first season also with Liverpool. Though Liverpool came up empty handed last season despite reaching the Champions League final, Salah has been rightly praised for his presence in the box and his goals and has continually been making the short lists for all sorts of awards. Last week he won the goal of the season for example.
However Salah has started this season off very slow, scoring just 3 goals so far from 11 games in all competitions. Whilst at this stage of the season there really shouldn’t be any cause for concern we only have to look back throughout his career to see that last season may have been unique.
Take out last season and the most league goals Salah has scored is 15 with Roma. In all competitions that rises to 19 again with Roma in the same season. Salah is 26 and whilst he still has a good five seasons at the very top it is easy to see why last season doesn’t correspond with the others.
Still how will this affect Liverpool is anyone’s guess giving that they have an abundance of players that can score goals in the likes of Daniel Sturridge and Roberto Firmino but Salah’s lack of goals this season could come back to haunt Liverpool at a later stage in the season when they need him to make the difference. Salah will certainly score more goals this season but on the evidence of his past history and the way he has started this season it is questionable if he is the real deal or as Steven Gerrard once said: “we are witnessing the start of greatness.”, which may have been said quite prematurely.
