With just two goals in seven Premier League games this season and none from open play since Matchday 1, Mohamed Salah’s form has dipped after an incredible 2024-25.
It was a most unwelcome experience of déjà vu for Liverpool.
Arne Slot’s men enjoyed scoring late winners earlier this season, but for the second weekend in a row, they went to London to play a team beginning with C and lost 2-1 to a goal deep in stoppage time.
It was particularly galling for Mohamed Salah to trudge off in defeat at former club Chelsea because he’d missed two good chances to score. It was the latest setback in what has been a frustrating start to the season for the Egyptian.
He scored twice in the five league wins that Liverpool began the campaign with, both in second-half stoppage time, including a late winner from the penalty spot at Burnley.
Salah also showed he’s still got it with a terrific goal against Atlético Madrid in the Champions League, but that was a rare glimpse of his genius in 2025-26.
It was, frankly, baffling to see Salah finish as low as fourth in the voting for the 2025 men’s Ballon d’Or after a season in which he recorded 57 goal involvements in all competitions (34 goals, 23 assists), the most of anyone from Europe’s top five leagues. But it summed up how things have been for him in recent weeks.
Overall, performances from Liverpool hadn’t been convincing, even though they won seven in a row from their opening-day win over Bournemouth to an EFL Cup victory against Southampton. People wondered if results or performances would change first, and unfortunately for the Reds, it was the former as they went on to lose three games in eight days against Crystal Palace, Galatasaray and Chelsea.
Salah didn’t score in any of those games (albeit he started on the bench in Istanbul), but arguably most noticeable was how unlikely scoring seemed, especially in the first two defeats.
He had two presentable chances at Stamford Bridge but rather than put them away, he resembled a player shorn of his usual swagger and confidence.
Salah will always be under more scrutiny than most, especially after landing a new bumper contract last season to add another two years to his deal at Anfield. The idea was that keeping Salah and adding star names like Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak would ensure further domination from the English champions. It’s still early days and Liverpool remain second in the league, just one point behind Arsenal, but things aren’t looking great at the moment.
At their best in recent years, Liverpool have found a way to get Salah plenty of the ball in dangerous areas, but that is not happening this season.
He averaged 48.6 touches per 90 minutes last season in all competitions; that’s down to 42.6 this season. He has never averaged fewer than 48.1 touches per 90 in a full season at Liverpool, but more notable are his touches in the opposition’s box, which have gone from 9.6 per 90 last season to just 5.5 this. The fewest he has ever averaged in a full season since arriving at Anfield is 8.5, in his first campaign with Liverpool.
Whether it’s age or just full-backs staying tighter to him when he receives the ball, Salah is not dribbling anywhere near as often as usual. Last season, he attempted 3.5 dribbles per 90 with a success rate of 39.3% in all competitions, and he has never averaged fewer than 2.8 dribbles per 90 in a campaign for Liverpool or had a success rate lower than 31.6%. However, after 10 games this season, he is attempting just 1.6 dribbles per 90, with a 20% success rate.
In fact, in the Premier League, Salah has completed just one of 11 attempted dribbles (9.1%). Compare that to last season, when he completed 58 of 137 (42.3%).
Obviously, he’s only played 10 games this term compared to 52 last season, so it’s a small sample size, but almost all of Salah’s numbers are down.
He is averaging just 2.0 shots per 90, dropping from 3.4 last season and having never averaged fewer than 3.3 in a season at Liverpool, while his expected goals (xG) per 90 is just 0.32, almost half his 0.63 from 2024-25. The lowest it has ever been in a full season for the Reds is 0.55 per 90.
Across his last 24 games in all competitions at club level, Salah has scored just four non-penalty goals from 52 shots.
Rather than being entirely his fault – after all, this is a player who recorded 47 goal involvements in the Premier League just last term, a record for a 38-game season in the competition – it could be that the makeup of the team is having an impact on him.
It should also be noted that his creative numbers have not all dipped as much. While he is creating around half a chance fewer per 90 (1.6 from 2.1 last season), his expected assists per 90 (0.23 from 0.24) and big chances created per 90 (0.65 from 0.66) are basically identical.
His assist for Ryan Gravenberch against Everton was fantastic, playing a perfect ball into the path of the midfielder at Anfield, while an inch-perfect trivela cross to Isak at Chelsea probably should have also resulted in a goal at the weekend, but the Swede headed over.
Losing Trent Alexander-Arnold was always likely to have a negative impact on Salah in particular, such was the on-field relationship they enjoyed on the right during their eight seasons together on Merseyside. The England international left for Real Madrid in the summer, and with it, a huge source of creativity for Salah left with him.
Alexander-Arnold played 147 line-breaking passes (LBPs) to Salah in the Premier League last season, at least 39 more than any other combination in the competition. Josko Gvardiol to Jérémy Doku (108) was the only other to total at least 100 in 2024-25.
Of those, 37 broke the opposition’s defensive line, with Alex Iwobi to Antonee Robinson (29) and Bruno Fernandes to Alejandro Garnacho (21) the only other combinations to even reach 20.
The next highest combo for Liverpool was, perhaps surprisingly, Ibrahima Konaté to Salah (89). The Frenchman has found his teammate with 10 this season.
Despite losing Alexander-Arnold to Madrid, Liverpool have made the most LBPs in the Premier League again in 2025-26 (444), with their 17 chances created from LBPs also the most. Only Man City (9) have scored more than their eight goals following LBPs.
Dominik Szoboszlai to Salah is the third-most common LBP combo (23) in the league. No other Liverpool player has found him with more than 10, though as you can see, despite the Hungarian playing some games at right-back this season, most of his LBPs to the Egyptian have come from midfield positions.
On a per-game basis, Szoboszlai is finding Salah with around 3.3 LBPs in the Premier League this season, while Alexander-Arnold did so with 4.5 per 90 in 2024-25.
In terms of other players who have featured at right-back for Slot this season, Conor Bradley has played eight LBPs to Salah in five appearances, though one came from a throw-in inside his own half, while four were short passes into not-particularly-threatening positions.
Jeremie Frimpong is yet to play any LBPs to Salah in his three league games.
The expectation was that Wirtz would primarily replace the creativity of Alexander-Arnold when he arrived for a nine-figure fee from Bayer Leverkusen; he has made seven LBPs to Salah in his seven Premier League appearances.
But going back to Salah’s link-ups with Alexander-Arnold, we ought to look back at last season. Salah started every single Premier League game for Liverpool, while Alexander-Arnold played 33 of 38 en route to the title.
In the 33 league games in which both featured, Salah scored 27 goals, averaging 3.5 shots per game, 0.48 non-pen xG and 10.5 touches in the opposition’s box. In the 12 games in which Alexander-Arnold didn’t play across last season and this, Salah has scored just four goals, two of which were penalties. He has averaged 2.3 shots per game, 0.3 non-pen xG and 7.2 touches in the opposition’s box.
That doesn’t necessarily equate to Salah being less effective just because Alexander-Arnold isn’t playing behind him. So much about the team has changed this season, and some of those games in 2024-25 came after Liverpool had secured the title when, let’s face it, they took their foot off the gas.
Having said that, a lot of Salah’s non-pen xG in those games came from what was basically an open-goal miss in the 3-2 loss at Brighton in May.
We already know he’s having fewer touches in the opposition’s box, so where is Salah getting the ball this season?
As you can see in the graphic below, he is having more open-play touches in the area by the right touchline halfway inside the opposition’s half but fewer in the boxes either side, suggesting his position to receive the ball is a bit more fixed than before, therefore perhaps more predictable to combat for defenders.
It was already his favourite area, but his 13.0 open-play touches per 90 in that part of the pitch is now significantly higher than anywhere else, and given it’s by the touchline and not inside the penalty area, you could argue that defenders are happy to see him having most of the ball there.
The 33-year-old received the most progressive passes – completed open-play passes in the attacking two-thirds of the pitch that move the ball at least 25% closer to the goal – in the Premier League last season by at least 74 (297). He has only received the sixth-most in 2025-26 (41), while his own progressive passes to teammates have decreased from 4.4 per game last season to 3.1 per game this.
However, Liverpool as a team are still making plenty of progressive passes. They made the most in the Premier League last season at an average of 32.6 per game, and while that has dipped slightly to 29.6 this term, it is still the most of any team in England’s top flight. It seems they’re just targeting Salah less often, though still more than any other player, quite possibly due to having new weapons. Wirtz has received 36 progressive passes, for example, the joint-11th most in the division.
The link-up with Wirtz is not quite producing yet, though it was promising to see the chance the German created for Salah early in the second half on Saturday. He produced a delightful reverse hooked flick into Salah’s path moments after coming off the bench, but the forward put his right-footed shot wide.
One thing we should bear in mind is that Liverpool have had an unusually difficult start to the season. While the Opta Power Rankings suggested others had a harder start, five of Liverpool’s seven opponents this season are currently in the top eight, while they also faced Newcastle. The Reds have only played one team in the bottom nine (Burnley), and their next game is against 10th-placed Manchester United. Once Slot’s men start facing lesser teams, Salah’s numbers should improve.
One stat that emphasises how Salah’s drop in form has affected Liverpool is that, of their 13 goals in the Premier League this season, only one – Salah’s penalty at Burnley – has been scored with a left-footed shot, the other 12 all coming via right-footed attempts. That would not be unusual for most teams, but it is when you have arguably the deadliest left-footed player in Europe playing every game. By comparison, of their 86 goals in the Premier League last season, 40 were via left-footed shots, and just 32 were right-footed.
We should also acknowledge the fact Salah lost a good friend and teammate in July with the sudden death of Diogo Jota. His tears after the opening-day win over Bournemouth while the Kop sang Jota’s song showed how much of an emotional toll such a tragic event must be having on him and other Liverpool players as they try to navigate a title defence while simultaneously grieving.
He has spectacularly bounced back before. Some people wrote Salah off after he only scored one non-penalty goal in his last nine Premier League games of the 2023-24 season, then going on to hit 29 the following campaign to fire Liverpool to the title.
He will surely be back to his best eventually, but Slot needs to figure out how to get his main man involved more, and soon, while Salah must ensure he gets back to making the difference in the big moments like he has done so well throughout his career.
After all, they don’t call him the ‘Egyptian King’ for nothing.
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