Mo Salah has undoubtedly been poor this season – his form has dropped off a cliff – but the winger’s positioning against Galatasaray didn’t give him a platform to be decisive.
Perhaps the biggest on-field change from last season to this has been the decline of Salah.
He has gone from arguably the best in the world, scoring 34 goals and providing 23 assists, to a man bereft of confidence who has netted just nine times this campaign.
Last term, Liverpool were a side designed to get the best from the Egyptian. Now, they are carrying him, but is it all his fault?
Salah has always been best as a winger who plays as an inside forward, finding space between full-back and centre-half.
However, this season he has had to stay wide. Just look at his heatmap against Galatasaray; he’s practically hugging the touchline.
In the Champions League first leg, Salah had just one touch in the opposition box, despite Liverpool having 54 percent possession.
He also had just 35 touches, 10 fewer than Giorgi Mamardashvili and the least of any starter bar Milos Kerkez, according to FotMob.
Compare this to last season, when Liverpool had just 30 percent possession away at Paris Saint-Germain, Salah still managed five touches in the opposition penalty area.
Against Galatasaray, when Salah did get the ball, he created one chance, made just one pass into the final third and managed zero successful dribbles.
In fairness to the No. 11, though, things didn’t improve much when he was replaced on the right wing by Jeremie Frimpong.
The rapid Dutchman only had two touches in the penalty box himself and made just five of his nine passes accurately.
The better change to make would probably have been to take off Joe Gomez and put on Frimpong at right-back, allowing Salah to come inside more often and give the substitute space to overlap.
A blunt attack in Istanbul
Liverpool’s No. 11 wasn’t the only attacker who struggled to get into the game.
Florian Wirtz, playing on the left in his first start since Valentine’s Day, didn’t create a single chance and Hugo Ekitike had just two shots, the notable one-on-one opportunity stemming from a Galatasaray mistake.
Slot was asked why he thought his front three weren’t influential enough in the first leg, to which he responded: “I think they were quite involved, to be honest, especially in the first half where they had a lot of involvement.
“We were – they were – a lot of times close to very promising situations, or even chances, because it felt to me at half-time we missed an opportunity.
“We missed an opportunity to score a goal to be in a much better position than we were at half-time, but the reality was that we weren’t and then we came out in the second half, immediately get a good chance for [Alexis] Mac Allister’s shot and, of course, not much later the one-on-one for Hugo.
“I think they had their moments. In an away game in Europe you cannot expect 15 chances for them, but the quality players they are usually – and another time they will be able to – get more out of these situations than we did today.”
There has undoubtedly been an element of waiting for Liverpool’s new signings to click, and Salah’s individual drop-off has been undeniable.
However, there is an argument to be had that the Reds aren’t deploying their legendary Egyptian effectively. They are moving away from relying on him, rightfully so, but there doesn’t appear to much of an alternative at the moment.
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