Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp dismisses Mohamed Salah claims after the goalless draw at Everton
The lack of impact Mohamed Salah has had in front of the goal has certainly gone down this season. Numerous reports claimed that the Egyptian’s dip in form has reduced due to gaffer Jurgen Klopp playing him wider than he would like. (h/t Liverpool Echo)
Salah would have ideally liked to be among the scorers after a dry spell in front of goal. But his lack of goals continued for one more game. The former AS Roma man has got only two goals from six appearances this season. To put this into perspective, by the sixth-game mark, he had five goals in the previous league campaign.
The gaffer was quick to dismiss any claims that Salah was forced to play wider than he would ideally want to and also asserted that the Egyptian was central more often than not as well.
“It’s not more than other seasons. I’m not sure. We want to have Mo in this position but we have always had him more often in the centre position as well.”
“Today especially we wanted to use him a bit more centrally but didn’t have a lot of time to train obviously. We only recovered. We spoke a lot about it, I’m not sure I was clear enough in the first half, we didn’t do exactly what we wanted.”
Salah’s form a worry?
Jurgen Klopp has rejected the theory of Salah playing wide, and he backs the Egyptian to return to his usual self of scoring goals soon. Since as early as AFCON in February, Mo’s form has dipped considerably and was not up to the mark towards the end of last season as well.
Even against Everton, Salah had three shots on goal. One was blocked, one was on target and one was off-target. Pickford’s world-class performance denied the Reds any chance of getting a sniff on target.
In an otherwise lacklustre performance, the shining aspects in terms of the attack were Harvey Elliott and Roberto Firmino. Bobby made an instant impact from the bench with his brilliant pressing skills and was silky on the ball too. Defensively, Joe Gomez was the stand-out performer, who had one of his best games for the Reds.
Mo’s return to form is extremely crucial for the Reds as he has been an integral part of the team’s success since joining Liverpool in 2017. Once he turns up in front of the goal, Liverpool would be a force to reckon with again, with Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz providing the other options.
More recently, Diogo Jota returned to team training and featured for 10 minutes against Everton, bringing in a new dynamic to the team’s attack. Hopefully, we will enjoy better fortunes in the coming weeks.
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Liverpool begin their UEFA Champions League campaign next week and no better time for Mo Salah, to run down the wing and score for the Reds.
