Dismiss Mohamed Salah at your own peril.
The Egyptian star is no longer a young buck and certainly is enduring a cold spell, but the eagerness to dismiss him as exiting his prime seems pretty likely overblown.
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It’s not a surprise that more talk of Salah’s downturn has arrived given his weekend dust-up with Jurgen Klopp as well as Liverpool slipping away in the Premier League title race.
But there’s a reason reports of Salah’s intention to stay beyond this season are also hitting the media on Monday, as Sky Sports says, “Salah has given no indication that he wishes to leave and Liverpool are not planning to sell.”
That reason? Salah is still a fantastic player.
Assessing Mohamed Salah’s 2023-24 season
Mohamed Salah stuck around a bit longer than expected before leaving for the Africa Cup of Nations, and Newcastle likely wish he skipped town early given his 2-goal, 1-assist star show at Anfield on New Year’s Day.
That performance gave Salah a total of 14 goals and eight assists in 20 Premier League matches to start the season, and he had pitched in four further goals and an assist in seven other tournament appearances.
But Salah was injured starring for Egypt at AFCON, where he had a goal and an assist against Mozambique before limping off of a draw with Ghana.
His production has since dropped, and it doesn’t take William of Ockham to draw the conclusion that Salah hasn’t quite been at 100 percent in the ensuing matches. Salah missed four PL matches, had a goal and an assist in 46 minutes against Brentford, then missed two more matches with a “muscular ailment.”
All told, he’s produced ‘just’ six goals and four assists in 14 Liverpool appearances over 2024. And of course there’s no guarantee any player will recover from any injury... but come on.
And, really, Mohamed Salah has still been balling. The Egyptian trails only Erling Haaland in xG+xA per 90 minutes (1.19) and is third in xG despite playing only 2,286 minutes this season.
The figure drops to third (0.98) when you rank Salah in non-penalty xG+xA per 90 minutes, but let’s use that metric for a different exercise.
Mohamed Salah NPxG+xA/90 by Premier League season
2023-24 (so far): 0.98
2022-23: 0.87
2021-22: 0.97
2020-21: 0.65
2019-20: 0.84
It’s just one stat, but clearly hints at there being much ado about nothing in Salah’s relative struggles, which also happened in a spell in which Liverpool was largely missing right-sided star Mohamed Salah and sparkplug facilitator Diogo Jota. Seems notable.
If you’d like other stats, how about the following? Remembering his significant amount of missed minutes, Salah is second in the Premier League in expected goals on target (19.5, behind Haaland). He also leads the league in big chances created (21).