Arne Slot admits Mohamed Salah is below his usual standards at Liverpool
Salah has registered three goals and three assists in nine appearances so far this season, which is by no means a poor return for a winger
Arne Slot has admitted that, by his high standards, Mohamed Salah is currently experiencing a dip in form, but the Liverpool head coach believes there’s a team-wide explanation for it.
Salah has registered three goals and three assists in nine appearances so far this season, which is by no means a poor return for a winger.
However, after a campaign that saw him produce 34 goals and 23 assists in 52 games across all competitions, it’s clear the 33-year-old is not operating at his usual elite level.
Slot acknowledged this reality but, when asked whether he considers the Egyptian to be out of form, he offered a broader perspective.
He explained that Liverpool are no longer viewed as underdogs.
After thriving in the first half of his debut season and then battling to win the Premier League title in the run-in, opponents have now adapted to the challenge they pose.
“I think also over there, I see the same as the second part of last season, where he scored 12 goals, five from penalties [and] one from a set-piece, so six open-play goals,” he said.
“He is part of a team that faces different opposition than the first half of last season.
“To make that maybe a little bit more of an insight, if you compare how we won the away game against Man United, where they tried to play out from the back and we took the ball off them three times, to how United played at Anfield, where [Andre] Onana only went long, then that is one of the answers why it is more difficult for us to score open-play goals.
“Mo has a part of this, already you could see this in the second half of last season and the first part of this season. But now you are focused on Mo, the next time you are focused on Florian [Wirtz] then you are focused on Cody [Gakpo]… what I’m trying to say is we don’t score as many open-play goals anymore as we did in the first part of last season. This is something we work hard very hard on.
“The more we will play together in the new set-up, the better that will go, but we still struggled a bit to find enough goals from open play in the second part of last and the first part of this season.”
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