Gavin Cooney

SO MAYBE LIVERPOOL have played this Mo Salah contract renewal perfectly after all. 

Salah is clearly desperate to stay at Liverpool and to prove his point he is at risk of delivering the greatest Premier League season by an attacking player ever. 

Liverpool games have recently become an exercise in reading out the latest Salah Stat, but the bare numbers here are absurd. 

Today he hit 20 goals for an eighth-straight season, and became the first Premier League player ever to hit a goal and an assist in eight different games. He now has 30 goals and assists in 18 Premier League games, which means he is either scoring or creating every 50 minutes. 

The Goal and Assist record for a single player in a Premier League season is 47, registered by Alan Shearer and Andy Cole. Those came in 42-game seasons, however, with the 38-game record held by Thierry Henry, with 44. At the moment, we don’t need that caveat, as Salah is currently on course for 63 goals and assists this season. 

Salah grinned and applauded the Liverpool supporters at the end, and it was all a very different vibe to that which marred Liverpool’s previous visit to West Ham, where Salah was left on the bench and clashed publicly with Jurgen Klopp on the touchline. 

The contrast wasn’t limited to Salah. Where that game was a clumsy 2-2 draw that hammered the final nail into Liverpool’s flagging title challenge, this was another serene flex by a team marching to the title.

The result was 5-0 going on 9-1, with Alphonse Areola’s saves and Salah’s second-half profligacy conspiring to keep the score down and perhaps keep Julen Lopetegui forlornly in this job for a little longer. (Mohamed Kudus twice struck the woodwork, so he deserved a goal.) 

Kudus was rare in that he was a West Ham player who didn’t just Give Up in the second half. It was 3-0 at the break and so the game was over, with Trent Alexander-Arnold quickly scoring a fourth. At that point West Ham abandoned even a facade of resistance and Liverpool pulled the handbrake to ensure there were no additional injuries beyond Joe Gomez. Much of the second half was effectively a meeting that could have been an email. 

That Liverpool have allowed Salah, Alexander-Arnold and Virgil van Dijk wind down their contracts speaks to the turnover at executive level, where a vaccum formed above Klopp in the final couple of years of his reign. 

But as Manchester United should attest, it’s better to have a lack of decision-makers than employ poor ones. Michael Edwards’ return – albeit in a more senior, less Liverpool-specific role – looks to be the club’s key move after Klopp’s news became public. For Edwards and his new sporting director Richard Hughes took the brutally difficult question of replacing Klopp and appear to have aced it. 

Arne Slot is a revelation, for he has tweaked his rich inheritance to produce a team that look comfortably the best in Europe, and Salah’s phenomenal numbers owes much to how Slot is setting up the team. Slot spoke after the Stephen’s Day win over Leicester of how his set-up is geared toward getting his wide players into one-v-one situations, and Salah’s agility, control and sheer intelligence means he is still beating defenders who are much faster than him.

His assist numbers are ballooning too as Slot demands his players attack crosses at the far post: Slot’s slight tweak to something more resembling a 4-2-3-1 means there is generally an extra midfielder crashing the penalty area to get on the end of Salah’s crosses, too. 

Slot’s retooling of his team-mates have helped, too. Alexander-Arnold has been given a far more flexible role, keeping to the right flank more often, thus feeding Salah more often. Cody Gakpo has proved to be much better off the left than up front – Salah is profiting from attacking the back post when Gakpo crosses – while Luis Diaz is now excelling as a false nine willing to pop up just about anywhere.

Having dropped off centrally to pick up the ball and ultimately score the opening goal, Diaz found himself charging down the right to allow Salah set up Gakpo’s second goal. 

It is inconceivable that Salah and Liverpool don’t come to an agreement to renew before the season’s end: nobody wants to be running the club that allowed the next Ballon D’Or winner leave against his wishes and for free.