Mo Salah: What's Gone Wrong

by Steven Northover

On 11 April 2025, Mohammed Salah, arguably Liverpool’s greatest player in a generation, signed a two year contract, having had talks drag through the preceding seven months. 

It also marked Salah’s most impressive season, making a total of 47 goal contributions in 38 league appearances. 

This season… appears not to be going so well. 

In seven games, Salah has only scored two goals, with another two assists. Meanwhile, his new no. 22, Hugo Ekitike, has already scored three goals in all competitions this season. 

The narrative, then, is that Salah is starting to fade. The once all-powerful winger, who danced past Manchester City’s defence, made a mockery of Manchester United at Old Trafford (a number of times), and has won everything - that’s worth winning - in club football, is now a ‘has been’ who is effectively bringing the rest of team down with him. 

But is that true? If it is, what does Arne Slot do about it? If it isn’t, then what are the real reason for Salah’s apparent drop of form, or is it even a drop in the first place?

Let’s start with the statistics. 

Despite what has been perceived, Salah has only ever scored more than three goals in the opening seven games on four occasions in the last eight seasons. 

So this belief that he is some kind of 'goal machine’ is patently false, and in reality his goal scoring is largely spread across the season.

Credit: worldfootball.net 

Also, it is important to point out the changes in both personnel and tactics in that time. 

For example, throughout Jurgen Klopp’s era at the club, Liverpool were more than likely to play a 4-3-3 formation, with Salah on the right and Sadio Mane on the left, with Roberto Firmino through the middle. 

Firmino’s game reading intelligence, touch, and skill far outstripped his goal scoring abilities, so he was allowed to drop deeper into the midfield, allowing Mane and Salah move inside from the wings, often unmarked to score goals. 

Under Arne Slot, Liverpool are much more likely to play a 4-2-3-1 formation, with Salah playing in a much wider position. Indeed, the 24/25 season was Salah’s most prolific assist season of his Liverpool career, with 18 assists in the Premier League.  

So, if he is scoring at (broadly) the same rate as he ever has, why does Salah seem so…anonymous?

Ultimately, it comes down to new players, and the relationship he has yet to build with them. 

There has been a slight ‘reimagining’ of Trent Alexander-Arnold’s impact on this Liverpool team. Not that his exploits, and successes have been downplayed, just that there was an assumption that ‘anyone can do what Trent did’. The reality is more complex than that. 

The years of playing together had led to an almost ‘telepathic’ understanding, where Salah moved more centrally, Alexander-Arnold would move up the wing, becoming an attacking wingback.  

It was a tactic borne out of constant training, routine, and built on a relationship going back the best part of a decade, and it is something that can’t simply be replicated overnight. Indeed, even with someone such as Connor Bradley, who has more than enough of the attributes to Liverpool’s starting right back, his game is different to Alexander-Arnold, so that penetration that once existed simply does not anymore, often leading Salah looking ineffectual on the wing, and the team weak in defence. 

Salah has not been helped by the manager’s move to a narrower gameplan. 

The 4-2-3-1 formation is dependent on a strong, mobile midfield, something Liverpool arguably have missed over the last couple of seasons - it is a strong midfield, yes, but it isn’t particularly ‘mobile’, there are few players within the Liverpool midfield who are able to transition the midfield into an attack on a regular basis. 

In essence, Liverpool were missing an out and out attacking midfielder. 

Enter, Florian Wirtz

Many, many, many things have been written about Wirtz, both at Liverpool and in Germany, but the fundamentals are quite simple - he is an extremely gifted football player, who is still very young, and came with an extremely expensive price tag. None of this has helped his less than stellar start to his Liverpool career. 

His problem is that, despite what people may say, certain players are simply too expensive to drop. With the exception of the recent Chelsea match (where he came on at half time), Wirtz was ever present in the league. So seven games, no assist, no goals - 007. 

There is an universe where Wirtz costs a tenth as much, is able to play a much more restricted part in the first team, is given the time to develop and grow into his role and build an understanding with his team mates. But his price tag means that that period of ‘bedding in’ doesn’t happen, it can’t happen. 

Instead Wirtz, operating in a part of the pitch where Salah would have drifted into in previous seasons, has to learn his role, adjust to how the rest of the team plays, and acclimate to the Premier League. 

All the while, Salah is restricted to remain on the right, unable to move centrally, as to do so would overload the middle, and leave the right back open. 

So, ultimately, Salah’s loss of form isn’t just down to either fatigue, or disinterest, or a long footballing career, with almost ten years at the very top, coming to an end. 

His form has fallen because too much has happened in a short period of time, new players, combined with newer tactics, and a newer role.  

But there is nothing to say that he (and others) won’t be able to turn the season around. Afterall, it’s been seven games, seven games where, despite playing poorly, Liverpool are still second, a point behind Arsenal who are having a ‘championship winning’ season, apparently. 

Moreover, as I have stated earlier, whilst the perception is that Salah is having a ‘bad’ season, he is broadly on par with around half of his previous seasons at Liverpool. 

But there is a much overlooked aspect to his season that needs to be examined. 

Diogo Jota

Diogo Jota was the kind of player that appeared to transcend the trappings of being a football player. His down to Earth demeanor and ebay going personality made it easy for even Liverpool’s most die-hard rivals.   

The outpouring of emotion from the fan base itself was stark - fans from around the world came to Liverpool and to Anfield to pay their respects. Meanwhile, tributes came from across the sporting world, from the Club World Cup, to AFL, to the MLB. For a time, there was nowhere in the world where you couldn't get away from Jota’s death, and that was the problem. 

Mo Salah and Diogo Jota were close. Very close. So it is only natural that he would find this particular period of his life difficult. In any normal situation, the best and healthiest thing for Salah to do would be to escape from football for a while, and mourn the passing of his friend, before coming back as a stronger and better person. 

But this isn't a ‘normal’ situation. He can't simply ‘disappear’ for a while, because he is Mohammed Salah and his fame is everywhere. 

He can't ‘leave’ Liverpool either, because he is the team’s most important player, in an important season. 

So instead, whatever mourning he has to go through, is done in the glare of the public eye. 

Every match he is reminded of what he has lost, from the signs, to the songs sung at 20 minutes in every match. There's nothing wrong with that, it's the fan’s way of celebrating the life of a great football player, and a person, but it doesn’t mean it won't hurt Salah every time he sees or hears it. 

That's a characteristic of the team as a whole, also. As anyone who has lost someone they were close to will tell you, the grief of losing someone so suddenly is almost all encompassing. It permeates every aspect of your life, as if someone has put a hole in your very soul.

So under the circumstances, it's no wonder that it feels like Liverpool have lost their way somewhat, or that the players (not just Salah) appear to have lost the ‘spark’ that led the team to the league title. 

It's not that they've given up, or the competitive tension that has driven so many of the squad for such a long time doesn't exist anymore, it's much more fundamental than that. 

They've just lost their mate, in the cruelest way possible, and somehow they need to navigate their own way through the grief, all the while the world looks on. 

So, to sum up, there have been times this season where Salah has looked either disinterested, or reluctant to play his role within the team. But that has happened numerous times throughout his career at Liverpool. What’s different this season is he has to do it with one of his closest friends, whilst being reminded about it every time he plays.

Mohammed Salah doesn't need our criticism or derision, he needs our support and time. Because he will come good. 

Because Mo Salah is inevitable.