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Mo Salah 2025/26 Season

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Gerry_A_Trick said:
Neither is Salah, but anyone playing regularly in our front three should be capable of contributing a lot of goals.
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He's never played regularly for us, but when he has he's contributed towards goals. I'm not sure what your point is. A good, unselfish and intelligent player should have the ability to weigh up the options and probability of a positive outcome. All Salah is doing is grasping desperately at any half chance at increasing his goal stats.
 
mark1975 said:
He's never played regularly for us, but when he has he's contributed towards goals. I'm not sure what your point is. A good, unselfish and intelligent player should have the ability to weigh up the options and probability of a positive outcome. All Salah is doing is grasping desperately at any half chance at increasing his goal stats.
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Stat padding, plain and simple
 
Its fair to say teams dont fear him at all anymore ... they almost dare him try and run at defenders, because he rarely succeeds, and his ability to create opportunities has slipped [with his pace] a lot this year [with no Nunez to blame].

I dont think well ever see the Salah we saw for a large chunk of last year. It may be jota, it may be father time, it just may be the team cant do it for him or it may be his approach (as noted above). Whatever it is, I hope I'm wrong and it clicks for him and the team, but as is the case with slot, there's a lot of data in 2025 (second half of last season, this season) that should leave fans with a lot of questions/concerns.
 
LeTallecWiz said:
Its fair to say teams dont fear him at all anymore ... they almost dare him try and run at defenders, because he rarely succeeds, and his ability to create opportunities has slipped [with his pace] a lot this year [with no Nunez to blame].

I dont think well ever see the Salah we saw for a large chunk of last year. It may be jota, it may be father time, it just may be the team cant do it for him or it may be his approach (as noted above). Whatever it is, I hope I'm wrong and it clicks for him and the team, but as is the case with slot, there's a lot of data in 2025 (second half of last season, this season) that should leave fans with a lot of questions/concerns.
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You could see it last season. He’d stink the place out and then get played into space or get a pen and score. Overall he was poor at the actual playing football thing. The same this season but he’s not getting the space or pens.
 
It was a major, major oversight not to start blooding in his replacement this summer. Or, at the very least, start transitioning Salah out of the side, because whether he has one year or two left with us, his time is running out. We don't have a Mane on the other wing to ease the burden in any way either, which is as big of an issue.
 
Arne Slot’s big mistake at Liverpool this season? Failing to drop struggling Salah
There must be blame. We need heads on the battlements. We need entrails, horses, chains, a public quartering. Basically we just need to feel something. We need, above all, to feel that this is all someone’s fault.This is how elite football must function now. The Dalai Lama once said that instead of looking to blame others we should look for answers within ourselves, which just goes to show how wrong you can be and is, frankly, very disappointing from the Dalai Lama.

It turns out medieval medicine was right. Human beings are indeed composed of four basic humours: bile, fire, earth and being incredibly angry on the radio, energies that must be constantly fed.

There is a central irony here. Rage and snark have become football’s defining energy. There is simply too much space out there, too many content channels, but not enough actual sport to fill them. So perceived injustice, the divvying up of fault, fraud-dom, bald fraud‑dom have become the game around the game.

But at the same time there is less to actually blame people for. Success and failure have become structural. Big clubs really are too big to fail in any meaningful sense. Managers no longer run teams like autocrats, surrounded by directors, assistants, data wonks. There is simply less space to actually make terrible mistakes on an individual basis, the kind of clear-as-day mistake that really does throw an entire team out of whack.

At which point, enter Arne Slot, who is out there making at least one very obvious, big‑ticket managerial mistake. Why is Slot playing Mohamed Salah in every game? Why is Slot continuing to do this even when the evidence is clear that this is a mistake? One that can still be fixed, but which becomes more deeply compounded with every passing week.

It makes little sense in the abstract. Slot is a title-winning manager, a details-obsessive, super-smart no-bullshit merchant. Crucially, he possesses a pair of eyes. And it has been obvious for the last two months that Liverpool are suffering with Salah in the team, most notably against stronger opponents.

Since their last trip to the Etihad Stadium in February, when Salah was brilliantly decisive, Liverpool have played 11 games against City, Newcastle, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain, losing seven of them. Salah has played in all of these, contributed zero goals and performed most of the time like a Salah-shaped void, a ghost at the edge of things.

A wretched afternoon at the Etihad Stadium was confirmation of two key points. First, Salah’s own performance is well below the required level. And second his weaknesses speak directly to the problems in the team around him.

Most obvious is the lack of physicality. Liverpool have gone from being more intense than their opponents, from intensity as a baseline and non-negotiable, to fielding three very small men in Salah, Florian Wirtz and the current version of Alexis Mac Allister. They are a team that is always struggling to exist in the same space as more powerful opponents.

In the opening minutes against City there was the spectacle of Wirtz chasing Jérémy Doku down City’s left flank, grabbing and grappling at his back while Doku seemed vaguely aware of being tapped on the shoulder. Moments later Nico O’Reilly, a really good modern Premier League power player, could be seen cuffing Salah out of his lane like a man swatting away a cloud of midges.

This spreads to other parts of the team. Pep Guardiola was coy about Conor Bradley after the game, talking up what a wonderful full-back Bradley has become (which is true) but also making sure everyone present noticed what City had done to him, which was to constantly double up, knowing in advance that Salah simply won’t offer any cover, that his flank is always open.

So Bradley, one of Liverpool’s better players, is transformed into a point of weakness by the failings of the superstar in front of him. So Ibrahima Konaté is also drawn out to the right away from the tight spaces that suit his game, all the better to perform like a man with his legs on the wrong way round. And so the midfield pivot is pulled apart, always asked to cover slightly too much space.

This imbalance is also endangering Slot’s rebuild. Wirtz is being asked to adapt to the world’s most brutal league in a team already balancing the presence of one non-contact creative princeling. Alexander Isak, already under pressure after a summer spent acting as a footballing Helen of Troy, must now fix this team rather than adding a final gloss.

It is important to note that none of this really Salah’s fault. He is not doing anything different. He has never been a defensive player, something that didn’t matter when he was flanked by a furiously hungry three-man midfield. He is also right to be aware of his own worth as one of the most thrillingly productive goalscorers the league has seen. But then, he’s also 33 years old, quite small, and a veteran of more than 700 career games. What was everyone expecting to happen here?

Perhaps we should blame Liverpool’s executive for offering Salah that new contract at a time when it was clear the team would have to be fundamentally rebuilt. Liverpool’s entire ownership mantra is to make clear commercial choices, to be smarter than its bloated fellow juggernauts. Retaining a massive-money 33-year-old seems counterintuitive. Are we looking at another Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang here, a more chiselled Phil Jones?

But the contract did make sense on basic numbers at the time. When he signed in April, Salah was averaging 1.4 goal involvements per game, an astonishing level of productivity. The total cost of two more years of this is £36m, the kind of sum you might throw at a half-forgotten full‑back. There have been suggestions a deeper data dive could have predicted the drop-off this season. But still. Give us half of this. We can make it work.

Slot has made this into a major problem by refusing to drop his star player, hobbling his own rebuild in the process. It is a mistake so obvious, so clear in its outlines, that it is tempting to cast around for some deeper motivation. We know that informal chats take place, that star players will demand guarantees on selection. Does Slot’s own status come into this, a power imbalance between generational star player and affable Dutch single‑season wonder?

Salah was re-unveiled on a wave of emotion. This was all vibes energy, goodwill. How involved was Slot in the process? And who had final oversight of the top‑heavy spree that has left Liverpool not just with too many attackers, but with the wrong attackers, two centre-forwards and a surfeit of lightweight creatives? It never felt coherent, or like the work of single voice, more a case of team building by committee. It certainly doesn’t feel very Slot.

The international break presents an opportunity to find solutions. Salah will be off to the Africa Cup of Nations before long. The current XI is clearly unbalanced, in hock to the past, but also making an enemy of its future. There is still time to show some teeth and pick a team solely on merit and future needs. But that time is definitely now.
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footballing Helen of Troy
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That made me chuckle.

Anyways, I think most managers would have persisted with Salah in this situation when you consider the players stature, record and the alternatives available.

But yeah, probably persisted for a little too long. We are properly in the shit and we need to find a way to stop the rot even if it isn't particularly glamorous.
 
We can't stop the rot if everyone isn't either willing or able to put a shift in, defensively and in an attacking sense. Salah can't do that anymore, certainly not in three games a week. We can't defend compactly with him in the team.
 
If he wasn't dropped on Sunday when will we ever drop him? If they're worried about him getting all weird about it then when there's three big games in a week is the ideal time to say to him, we've checked your stats and we need to protect you... Some shit like that.

If he's fit he plays. It must be in his contract.
 
Modo is like a dog with a bone.
Best to just ignore him. We can expect this through out the season. Any bad game we have (which it looks like we will have a lot more - with or without Mo in the team), he will come out in his high horse with his agenda. There is nothing more predicatable.
 
rubans said:
Oh my gosh. Let it go. Obsession with one player. Bobby loved linking with Mo but we wouldn’t have won much just with Bobby. We spent 36m something on Mo and got 9yrs with him, spent 130m on ISuck and yet to get 2 weeks of fitness out of him, surely a bigger worry for the future. No place to hide over Afcon.
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I'll let it go the day he stops playing like a selfish prick.
Team Sadio all the way here.
 
kingjulian said:
Modo is like a dog with a bone.
Best to just ignore him. We can expect this through out the season. Any bad game we have (which it looks like we will have a lot more - with or without Mo in the team), he will come out in his high horse with his agenda. There is nothing more predicatable.
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That can be said about the posters who backed Mo regardless of the signs that were clearly there last year ... Was very predictable and not much fun, like this tbh (though last year was better as we were winning).

I'm sure that's how it is on every contentious subject though -
 
LeTallecWiz said:
That can be said about the posters who backed Mo regardless of the signs that were clearly there last year ... Was very predictable and not much fun, like this tbh (though last year was better as we were winning).

I'm sure that's how it is on every contentious subject though -
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It’s not just about backing one player over another and signs have been there for a while and was always likely there would maybe a big drop off. It’s about narrowed focus on a single player, scape goating isn’t going to fix this team. It’s predictable and boring. Been like that for yrs… Why should he not be defended against some of it?

Last year was better for a simple fact he was scoring and assisting at this point and we won the league with him being a massive part of it. It’s going to be interesting to see how some of those posters respond once he’s at Afcon, whom will be the scape goat then? None of the new lot are performing to the value expected for starters.
 
rubans said:
It’s not just about backing one player over another and signs have been there for a while and was always likely there would maybe a big drop off. It’s about narrowed focus on a single player, scape goating isn’t going to fix this team. It’s predictable and boring. Been like that for yrs… Why should he not be defended against some of it?

Last year was better for a simple fact he was scoring and assisting at this point and we won the league with him being a massive part of it. It’s going to be interesting to see how some of those posters respond once he’s at Afcon, whom will be the scape goat then? None of the new lot are performing to the value expected for starters.
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I'm surprised that you're so wound up about it.
If his own teammate disliked him, why can't I?
 
Modo said:
I'm surprised that you're so wound up about it.
If his own teammate disliked him, why can't I?
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Not wound up, just you go on about it like jilted spouse every possible post. You are all by means allowed ofcoure but I don’t see the point… Sadio is not going to fix this.
 
rubans said:
It’s not just about backing one player over another and signs have been there for a while and was always likely there would maybe a big drop off. It’s about narrowed focus on a single player, scape goating isn’t going to fix this team. It’s predictable and boring. Been like that for yrs… Why should he not be defended against some of it?

Last year was better for a simple fact he was scoring and assisting at this point and we won the league with him being a massive part of it. It’s going to be interesting to see how some of those posters respond once he’s at Afcon, whom will be the scape goat then? None of the new lot are performing to the value expected for starters.
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I think this post implies that the 'replacement' could be found immediately and we could move on as if we didn't lose Mo.
A successful team either gets lucky that way (I think Diaz for Sadio shows how hard it is to do so - Diaz is brilliant *but* no where near Sadio ... Man U did this well in Slur Alex's years unfortunately) ... or you find a player to bed in as you adjust ... It's not exactly possible with Mo right? I mean he's undroppable (for many reasons - the why is irrelevant, whether positive or negative) - so how do you start doing things?

I think Afcon will be interesting *if* the strikers we bought are put in a position to succeed - I'm hopeful for a 4-3-1-2 - and if the manager is better than what he's shown us the last year (a lot of questions, as there were about Salah). My gut tells me 'high horse with his agenda' will come into play as we'll struggle (for whatever reason) and once he's back, he'll come back in and the same issues will persist and then, 'high horse with his agenda' will continue too!

I hope we'll be ok (ok for me this season is top 4, preferably with a cup).
 
LeTallecWiz said:
That can be said about the posters who backed Mo regardless of the signs that were clearly there last year ... Was very predictable and not much fun, like this tbh (though last year was better as we were winning).

I'm sure that's how it is on every contentious subject though -
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There is no doubt in my mind that Mo is part of the problem right now, but not the main or only problem. I can still see that he can end up being a part of any solution we come out with.


But bringing up Mane who has long moved on since is totally pointless and makes Modo sound like he is suffering from jealous wife/girlfriend syndrome. It just makes me pity him. It's a testament to Mo's quality that Modo had to wait this many years with all this grudge to properly unload all this filth. Its laughable.
 
kingjulian said:
There is no doubt in my mind that Mo is part of the problem right now, but not the main or only problem. I can still see that he can end up being a part of any solution we come out with.


But bringing up Mane who has long moved on since is totally pointless and makes Modo sound like he is suffering from jealous wife/girlfriend syndrome. It just makes me pity him. It's a testament to Mo's quality that Modo had to wait this many years with all this grudge to properly unload all this filth. Its laughable.
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Lol wait? You think this is something new?
I've disliked Salah for years. Even when Sadio was playing.
See it as countering the regular circle jerking sessions you and others are having about Salah.
 
Lets not pretend what you are doing here is anything other than shivving a man when he is down. You might have some grand vision of doing some universal balancing act.

I dont think anyone has been harping on in this forum like Mo is carrying this team and without him we are nothing. But you are definitely making him the root of all problems in this thread.

I dont think I can be accused of any kind of Mo worshipping in this forum - feel free to point me to a post where I have done this. Im just calling out your bullshit which has been a bit insufferable over the last month. Cool it.
 
kingjulian said:
There is no doubt in my mind that Mo is part of the problem right now, but not the main or only problem. I can still see that he can end up being a part of any solution we come out with.
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He is without any shadow of a doubt 'the main problem'
His greed, inability to beat a defender 1 on 1, his lack of goals and assists whilst refusing to pass square for tap-ins, constantly giving the ball away whilst ignoring the desperate need to track back and help out the RB, is having a profound affect all over the pitch : forwards, midfield and defence and the balance of the whole team.

It's not like it's only this forum saying it - all of the mainstream media sees the issue and is saying it too.

Slot needs to grow a pair and bench him. If he can't then maybe AFCON will be our saviour and make it impossible for Salah to come swanning straight back into the starting lineup.
 
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