Joe Schmalah
When we were doing it week in and week out, it felt wonderful, didn’t it? First Palace in the last minute, now Chelsea, and with that silly loss in Istanbul sandwiched in between, this is certainly starting to feel like a mini-crisis. In reality, we must keep in mind that all three games were away, to strong home teams, and we could have won all three, fairly easily at that, and in at least one sense, this can be considered reversion to the mean.
But there are problems, real one. Let’s talk about the biggest.
I have to call it like it is.
Mo Salah is – and I realize this will elicit some hostility – shit.
This is no longer a little problem. We are no longer in the territory of “yeah, but” often followed with some variation of “it’s Mo, he makes up for it with a late goal or assist.” Mo isn’t making up for it, he is costing the team good chances, and a pretty large number of them. From a statistics perspective, the main victim of Salah’s profligacy is Florian Wirtz, who keeps finding Mo in good positions only to see excellent chances wasted. Look no further than the utterly brilliant shouldabeen-assist within a minute of opening the second half for a painful illustration of a repeat problem. To not even hit the target was so poor, one of my colleagues wondered if this was someone else in disguise, hence this column’s title.
The thing is, Arne Slot is famous for benching players are doing poorly without care for their squad status, but can he bench Salah? He tried to do it in the champions league game, presumably to give Mo a bit of extra rest before heading out to Stamford Bridge for today’s game, but that didn’t work either, because we let Elliott go and Frimpong isn’t really ready to draft into that right winger role.
It’s not just opportunities like that either. A few minutes later, Mo cut inside and had several choice passing options, including Isak who was free in the box and ready to pounce. Instead, Mo selfishly tried a difficult curler, and it ended up in the upper rows. It used to be his signature shot, but these days one must wonder if it’s a forged signature. It happened again a few minutes after that. You can see the quality is still there. There was a fantastic pass to Isak late in the first half that should have at least ended on target, and Mo still holds the ball beautifully when called upon, but something is ticking very badly for Salah. I cannot imagine that he doesn’t know it, so what happens next?
In the meantime, so much of Liverpool’s attack is neutered. That wing, between Mo and Trent, produced so many chances in previous seasons. Sadly, with Diaz at Bayern, the left wing feels weaker too; Cody Gakpo is a terrific footballer, but he is still maturing into that role. In the end, our number nines get few if any legitimate opportunities and watching Isak’s body language today, you could see how frustrating all this must be.
Three losses in a row is a problem. That five point cushion has been obliterated, but I’m sure glad we had it to give away. The big question is, can we recover and start putting points on the board again before it gets too late?
One man has the job of figuring this out. His name is Arne Slot, and I don’t envy him.
As for Joe – I mean Mo – it will be interesting to see if he misses a game or two, or maybe come off the bench. It might do him good, especially if he’s honest with himself. And it does appear like Chiesa is ready, willing, and able. Also, can we get Harvey back?