Mohamed Salah has been criticised for not being at his best this season, but club legend John Barnes believes Liverpool's problems do not stem from their Egyptian star
John Barnes
John Barnes has defended Mohamed Salah(Image: Getty Images)
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John Barnes has dismissed concerns over Mohamed Salah’s form and is convinced that the Liverpool hero will return to his best soon. Salah’s form has been in the spotlight this season, with the Egyptian not carrying his red-hot 2024/25 exploits into the Reds’ Premier League title defence.
The 33-year-old has five goals and three assists in 16 appearances so far this season – a far cry from his staggering returns in Arne Slot’s debut campaign. Salah led the charge for Liverpool with 34 goals and 23 assists in 52 games last season – form which saw him earn a new two-year contract.
Liverpool invested heavily in the summer, splashing £446million to bring in seven new players, with the attack seeing the biggest overhaul. Alexander Isak, Hugo Ekitike and Florian Wirtz all arrived for huge fees, with Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez and Harvey Elliott among those to depart.
Things have yet to click for Slot this season as he tries to integrate the new players, with Liverpool sitting eighth in the Premier League ahead of their match against Nottingham Forest on Saturday.
Wayne Rooney and Paul Scholes have been among the pundits to point the finger at Salah, with his work ethic criticised, while a £65m move in January for Bournemouth’s Antoine Semenyo has been mooted as a potential replacement.
But Barnes has launched a passionate defence of Salah and believes the issues are much more nuanced. “Well, there's a culmination of different things. It's not necessarily Mo Salah's form, it's that we're playing differently,” he replied when asked by Mirror Football on behalf of betting site BetSelect if Salah’s form was a concern.
“If you think about the way Liverpool played before, it was for Trent [Alexander-Arnold] or the rest of the team to create for Mo. Whereas now, with players like Florian Wirtz, Ekitike, and Isak, we're playing differently. Once we get that right, we’ll be okay. We’re just going through a few teething issues, and it’s a coincidence that Mo Salah is 33; people are putting two and two together and blaming age.
“The whole team needs to get used to a new way of playing, which isn’t necessarily just going to be about shooting for Mo Salah. Mo will still be dangerous, but he's just not going to get the ball in dangerous situations as much as he did. He's not going to get the ball as quickly. We’ve now got a lot of dribblers now, and so we're not going to play as quickly as we did in the past, and so Salah can’t use his pace to run onto balls and to play one against one.
Mohamed Salah of Liverpool
Mohamed Salah has five goals this season so far
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“Teams are now playing differently against us as well. They're defending deeper. They're making it more difficult for us. So it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with Mo. It's just a culmination of a new team getting used to new players, us playing differently, and the opposition playing differently against us. I have no fears about Liverpool's long-term success. But obviously, it'll take us time to get back to doing what we did over the last three or four years.”
Barnes spent 10 years performing at the highest level on the wing for Liverpool so understands the glare Salah is under. He’s certain that the Egyptian’s form will pick up once he’s got used to his new team-mates.
“I still think he's part of the best 11,” he added. “Of course, he's not necessarily going to be the main part as he was before, but I still think he's part of his best 11 as it stands. It's just a question of integrating more. We just have to come up with a way that suits everybody, which is obviously different from what they've done over the last five, six years.”
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