Explaining why Mohamed Salah has MASSIVELY dropped off | OneFootball

The ever-reliable Mohamed Salah has gone missing for Liverpool this season.

His stats aren't as bad as the narrative around him might have you believe, but his performance levels are a massive cause for concern, given he recently signed a new two-year contract.

A drop-off from last season was inevitable - after all, it was the best Premier League campaign we've ever seen from an attacker, scoring 29 goals and 18 assists, with 10 other goal contributions coming in other competitions. He didn't necessarily carry Liverpool to the title, but he played a huge part in it.

This season, it appears as though his age has caught up to him now that he's 33 years old and it's clear that he's not quite gelled with his new teammates yet. It's also clear that he's been impacted massively by the loss of Diogo Jota, which is an unquantifiable factor.

Any number of those things could be used to explain his underwhelming campaign so far, but there's one obvious metric we're ignoring which explains perfectly why Salah is yet to be at his optimal best.

He's being isolated on the pitch

The Athletic recently published a report about why Liverpool are struggling this season compared to last and Salah's poor form is seen as one of the main reasons. He's only managed to score five goals and three assists in 15 games. As the Reds' best attacker, that's a major problem in need of solving.

Although, when you consider just how little time he gets on the ball, it's actually a remarkable effort.

In the report, it's claimed that his 45.4 touches per 90 minutes are his lowest since the 2018-19 season, when he made 30 Premier League goal contributions, his fourth worst Liverpool season.

With that in mind, he's simply not being found by his teammates as often as he's used to. To an extent, you'd expect that, since Florian Wirtz is often deployed down the left-hand side rather than the more central areas. Furthermore, Trent Alexander-Arnold's long-balls are no longer in the team.

But what appears to be more key is the lack of connection between Liverpool's right-back and the No. 10 - whoever that might be. Arne Slot's system works in creating a number of triangles across the pitch, and while there might be one down the left, there certainly isn't one down the right.

Individual brilliance is something you can expect from Salah, and we all know how good a creator he's become over the last few years but limited output is to be expected when he's rarely on the ball.

You would presume that Slot is working on a way to shift his system a little more in favour of helping the Egyptian, otherwise his efforts thus far can be extrapolated to a mere 14 goals and seven assists.

Those returns would be the worst of his Liverpool career, and when he's earning £400,000 a week, we're looking at nearly £1m per goal contribution in the league. Furthermore, the right-winger is set to jet off for the African Cup of Nations in a few weeks time, which will further limited his season.

As such, regardless of his age, and how different this season might be for him, due to off the pitch circumstances, Slot 2.0 certainly isn't geared to getting the best out of Salah. Given we're nearing the end of his career, it's possible that this is intended, but right now, it's not working out for us.