Arne Slot believes Mohamed Salah may be struggling at Liverpool because Trent Alexander-Arnold is no longer providing assists for him. It has been a difficult start to the campaign for Salah, who has only scored three goals in his last 12 appearances for the Merseyside giants. He was fairly anonymous in the defeat to Manchester United over the weekend and was benched for the midweek victory over Eintracht Frankfurt.
Salah appeared frustrated after being left out of the starting team and responded by taking drastic action on social media. He wiped any mention of the Reds from his X (formerly Twitter) account while also changing his bio and profile picture. Slot was quizzed on the reasons behind Salah’s questionable form in Friday’s press conference and put forward an interesting theory.
“I don’t know if it’s sharpness,” said the Dutchman. “In general, players miss chances. He’s a human being. We’re not used to him missing chances let alone a few games in a row, but these things happen.
“The main thing is Mo has always scored his goals for our club. The last thing I worry about is Mo start to score goals again because that’s what he does his whole life and that’s what I expect him to do again.
Maybe his whole Liverpool [career] he played with Trent, so it could [be that]. But he’s been in promising positions often enough to score goals, maybe with Trent even more.
“But in general, if you have quite a few changes in the summer you have to find new connections. Mo is no exception to this.”
It comes after former Liverpool striker Michael Owen made a similar point, claiming that Salah is missing Alexander-Arnold following the defender’s move to Real Madrid.
“If there’s anyone in the Premier League you shouldn’t doubt, it’s him,” Owen told Sky Bet. “That said, if there’s something more going on, then age could be a factor.
“He’s 33 now. I retired at that age myself, so you can’t go on forever. That’s one possible reason. Another is that there’s no Trent Alexander-Arnold feeding him those balls anymore, the dynamic has changed.
“Conor Bradley plays differently; he looks to run past Salah rather than serve him. I did some analysis on TV showing that Salah is picking up the ball about 10 per cent deeper on average than last season.
“The tactics haven’t changed, but the personnel have. Or it could just be that the team isn’t firing yet.
“Every attacking player goes through a spell like this. It’s more likely just a blip, and he’ll bounce back soon, but it could be a bit of all the above.”