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2017/18 was a world-class season for Mohamed Salah, but that doesn’t necessarily qualify the Liverpool forward as a world-class player.
There’s been something noticeably different about the Egyptian attacker this season; he’s still provided a decent supply of goals and a few flickers of genius, but we’ve rarely witnessed that chuffed celebratory smile which made Salah such an unassuming menace, and he’s yet to continuously carve open opposition defences with the audaciously irresistible dribbles that littered his debut campaign at Anfield.
Let’s not veer into hyperbole – it would be a stretch to declare that Salah’s out of form. He’s still contributed to four Premier League goals this season – three goals and one assist in six outings – the same rate as his front three accomplices Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane. But in many ways, that’s precisely the point. While Firmino and Mane are top-class entities in their own right, Salah was a shade above them last season. He was Liverpool’s roaring talisman, but the Reds’ sustained potency this term has been much more of a collective effort.
Perhaps there are legitimate caveats for that. Salah certainly isn’t the only major Premier League star suffering something of a World Cup hangover, the most obvious example being his chief competitor in the Golden Boot race last season – Tottenham’s Harry Kane. And much like the Spurs star, it’s not just a question of physical fitness. Mental fatigue has been Kane’s ultimate downfall this season, but that arguably rings even truer with his Liverpool counter-part.
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Salah was rushed back to fitness to make the World Cup, a tournament in which he had the full weight of Egyptian hopes placed on his shoulders, and somewhere along the way he also fell out with the Egyptian FA over image rights. Harking back even further than that, he had the heartbreak of being forced off in last season’s Champions League final, before watching the Reds capitulate without him. That’s a whole host of turmoil and frustration, both on and on the pitch, to get over in a few weeks and be ready for the new Premier League season.
The other issue is how much attention teams are now paying Salah. Certainly at the start of last term he enjoyed the advantage of still being a relative unknown in the Premier League excepting that underwhelming short spell at Chelsea, which if anything only served as an additional smokescreen – there were plenty who thought Salah would flop for a second time in English football back at the start of 2017/18. This term though, there are no surprises. Everybody knows how dangerous Salah is and necessary precautions have been taken.
However, it’s important not to make excuses too readily; the very best players in the world belong to that calibre because they can filter everything out and still perform to the best of their abilities. Perhaps then, we should be questioning Salah’s mental resilience as well as his mental sharpness right now, but a far simpler explanation is that last season, one that saw him net an incredible 44 times across all competitions, was something of a freak occurrence. After all, that haul was more than double the African attacker’s previous career-best for a single campaign.
Statistically too, Salah’s performance levels are actually on par if not better than last season’s. Per match, he’s averaging the same amount of dribbles, 0.2 more shots and one more key pass. The only noticeable differences have been in his output – goals and assists combined, he’s contributing to 0.6 less goals per match so far this term.
If Salah were to maintain that current rate and make the same number of Premier League appearances as last season, 36, he’d be involved in around 22 less goals. Once again, that’s despite their being no significant statistical downturns between his performances over the last two campaigns.
That’s not to say, should his debut Anfield season prove to be something of a fluke, that Salah’s by any stretch of the imagination a spent force for Liverpool. Even if he never quite replicates a simply breathtaking campaign, he’s still a top-class talent who can score or create goals and cause huge problems when driving at the opposition.
His sheer presence alone has been a key asset for Liverpool this season – particularly in terms of drawing defenders towards him to create more space for Mane, the Reds’ top scorer in the Premier League, on the other side of the attack.
A one-season wonder then, certainly not. But a one-season world-class player? Perhaps. Salah could still be just warming up, and still recovering from a largely torturous summer, but the early signs suggest last term’s standards are simply too high for him to comfortably reproduce.
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