Without a shadow of a doubt, the standout player in the Premier League so far this season has been Mohamed Salah.
Notching 13 goals and 8 assists in the competition, the Egyptian winger is on track to have the best season of his career.
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Most recently he broke Wayne Rooney's record for the most games with a goal and assist in - 37 - and the impact he has made during his time in England has been second to none.
Salah is Liverpool's record Premier League goalscorer, he is rapidly climbing up the all-time Premier League goalscorers list and with his fitness looking better than ever, in addition to no midseason AFCON interruptions, he will have a huge role to play in Liverpool's success under Arne Slot.
The only underlying negative has been his unresolved contract situation, despite the forward's efforts to speed the process up by pleading to the media that he would like to stay - a move that has proved controversial with pundits and some fans.
Mo Salah Liverpool
© IMAGO - Mo Salah Liverpool
Salah is Liverpool's best player
Since 2017 when he made the move from Roma to Merseyside, Liverpool's eight-season wonder has been relentless in his pursuit to take the club back to the heights of yesteryear, subsequently winning the Champions League and the Premier League, amongst securing the other cup competitions the club participates in.
He's won it all, representing the club in impeccable fashion, proving himself over and over to be an all-time great at Liverpool and in England.
At first, he was just one part of the Sadio Mane, Roberto Firmino and Mohamed Salah triad, that performed so consistently well that it will forever be remembered as one of the truly elite front threes in world football.
Then came the addition of Diogo Jota, before Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez, Cody Gakpo and Federico Chiesa all subsequently made the move to join the Reds, replacing the old guard of Mane, Firmino, Takumi Minamino and Divock Origi.
But even despite such radical changes in Liverpool's forward line over the years, Salah remained elite on his own, delivering goal after goal for the club, and quietly evolving his game to perform as more of a creator while keeping up his goal targets.
Now into his eighth and potentially his last season, the Egyptian King seems to have found another level to his game.
At 15 goals and 12 assists across all competitions, marking nearly 30 goal contributions before we've even reached the halfway mark of the season, it is clear as day that we are watching greatness unfold before us, a campaign destined for the history books.
But in delivering standout performances every week, the attention has recently turned to Liverpool's other forwards, as Liverpool drew 3-3 to Newcastle last week - a game where Salah almost single-handedly set up the Reds for victory before Caoimhin Kelleher made an error in the 90th minute.
The inconsistencies in Liverpool's forward line
As mentioned, Salah has been nothing short of magnificent this season, his 27-goal contributions mean he has been involved in 55.1% of Liverpool's 49 goals this season.
However, his form does not suggest that Liverpool are a one-man team, as was some fans' criticism of the team following the disappointing Newcastle result earlier this week.
In the Premier League, Salah has been involved in 21 of Liverpool's 29 goals, which on the face of it is a man carrying his team on his back, but if you consider Liverpool's output across all competitions, then the story is put in much greater context.
While the quoted sample size looks just at the Premier League in claiming Salah carries us, here's the real picture...
Salah - 15 ⚽️s (12 🅰️s)
Diaz - 9 ⚽️s (2 🅰️s)
Gakpo - 8 ⚽️s (2 🅰️s)
Jota - 4 ⚽️s (2 🅰️s)
Nunez - 3 ⚽️s (2 🅰️s)
39 goals in all comps spread across the forwards. https://t.co/b6xBBqxgbd
— Will Comish (@WillComish) December 5, 2024
Diaz and Gakpo have both been having seriously impressive seasons by their own standards, except their efforts have come predominantly outside of the Premier League - in the Champions League or the EFL Cup.
As such, Liverpool's league form can be put down to Salah in part, meanwhile, Liverpool's continued form on all fronts under Arne Slot has been as a result of a collective performance from the team.
In essence, different players have turned up when required to and the team has benefited massively in turn, losing just one game of the 21 that Liverpool have played up until now.
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The reason behind the form of Liverpool's forwards
Salah is still the frontman, the headline act that all Liverpool fans want to see. He's box office. It's just part of his nature to break records and leave adoring fans speechless when he's on the pitch.
But in part, this is because Arne Slot wants him to be the one who Liverpool rely on. Very few teams have a player who performs so consistently every year that you can guarantee that he will deliver.
It's unusual, but it's a situation that Liverpool are quite rightly taking full advantage of.
In preseason, Salah topped the fitness tests, a feat that James Milner used to regularly achieve before he left the club at the end of the 2022/23 season.
Now it's Liverpool's 32-year-old winger who is showing off his fitness attributes.
His regular availability for each game, matched with his undeniable class and the club's inability to find an understudy for him, means he plays all the time, and so Slot has decided that in order for Liverpool to succeed, they have to play to his strengths.
More often than not, Liverpool will feed the ball to Salah on the right-hand side of the pitch. This is not by accident but by design. He's the team's best goalscorer and the team's best creator.
Naturally, the other forwards take advantage of the chances created by him and he takes advantage of the chances he receives - both from his teammates and those he's created for himself, where xg is a metric with no tangible value.
For other teams, the theme is very much the same. At Manchester City, the play goes through Erling Haaland. At Arsenal, the play goes through Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka. These are their team's best attacking assets. You work to their strengths.
© IMAGO
Liverpool without Mo Salah in the team
While Liverpool fans will be hoping that Salah will remain in the team next season, should his contract situation find a resolution, the reality is that Liverpool will lose him eventually, through a transfer or retirement.
And although that is a daunting prospect that I'm not even beginning to consider at this point, we may find he is absent from game to game, should he pick up a rare injury.
If that were to happen, there are some fans out there who would be quick to suggest that Liverpool are 'finished', much as they did when Jurgen Klopp left at the end of last season.
But during the 2023/24 campaign, where Liverpool challenged for the title, Salah spent some time away with Egypt at the African Cup of Nations and yet the team did not falter.
Through January earlier this year, the Reds played seven games, winning six of them and drawing once.
The fixtures included Newcastle and Chelsea at Anfield, and an away trip to Arsenal - the side coming away victorious in each of them.
A variety of solutions were used to fill in Salah's absence, including the use of Diogo Jota and Harvey Elliott on the right wing.
Now, by no means am I suggesting that the arrangement Klopp created was a sustainable one, nor am I suggesting that Salah's form then was anywhere near the standard he's producing right now.
But the focus changed. Liverpool played more across the front three, as they used to during the Mane-Firmino-Salah days, and should they need to, it seems reasonable to suggest that Slot might make a similar change.
If Salah were to get injured, then Elliott/Chiesa/Szoboszlai would take the role + we'd play more through Diaz/Gakpo on the left-hand side.
Players will step up when called upon. We aren't a one-man team.
— Will Comish (@WillComish) December 5, 2024
For the here and now, Liverpool don't need to change a thing. Everyone has their roles and forwards are dovetailing their goalscoring efforts, so when the team needs a goal, it could come from anyone.
Last season, Darwin Nunez was charged with that position, delivering a last-minute effort to save the game for the Reds, be it Newcastle (A) or Nottingham Forest (A), he was malleable to our needs.
He will chip in now and then, but his role for Slot is to do the dirty work for the benefit of the team.
Until we come to a point where no one turns up with a goal when we need one, stressing over our forward line is unnecessary.
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