Arne Slot blames Liverpool’s one problem for Mohamed Salah’s dip in form

Liverpool head coach Arne Slot has explained Mohamed Salah’s underwhelming form compared to last season.

Salah has two goals and two assists from six games in the Premier League this season and has not scored in his last three appearances.

This is in no way disastrous for a winger, but considering the extraordinary campaign he had last season, in which he racked up 34 goals and 23 assists in 52 games in all competitions, this is a clear drop in performance.

According to Slot, this downward trend began in the second half of the season for the Egypt international.

“I think also over there, I see the same as the second part of last season, where he scored 12 goals, five from penalties (and) one from a set-piece, so six open-play goals,” the Dutch explained in Friday’s press conference ahead of Chelsea.

“He is part of a team that faces different opposition than the first half of last season. 

“To make that maybe a little bit more of an insight, if you compare how we won the away game against Man United, where they tried to play out from the back and we took the ball off them three times, to how United played at Anfield, where [Andre] Onana only went long, then that is one of the answers why it is more difficult for us to score open-play goals.

“What I’m trying to say is we don’t score as many open-play goals anymore as we did in the first part of last season.

“This is something we work very hard on.

“The more we play together in the new set-up, the better that will go, but we still struggled a bit to find enough goals from open play in the second part of last season and the first part of this season.”

In other words, Slot argued that it is not specifically Salah who is underperforming for his standard, but Liverpool as a team are struggling to score open-play goals.

There is also the question of whether the switch from last season’s 4-3-3 to this season’s 4-2-3-1, likely to accommodate Florian Wirtz as a number 10, has an effect as well.

Still, it is early in the season and, as Slot pointed out, the more the team plays in this system, the more comfortable they will be.

Liverpool are also currently still leading the Premier League with a two-point cushion over second-placed Arsenal despite Salah not being in red-hot form.