Could Mohamed Salah really do it again for Liverpool this season? Salah enjoyed a record-breaking season for Liverpool but how will he fare in 2018/19? With the help of Jamie Carragher, MNF Extra explores the underlying numbers that suggest Salah can show his debut campaign was no flash in the pan.
After scoring 15 league goals for Roma in the season prior to his arrival at Anfield, there was plenty of optimism about what Mohamed Salah might be able to do in a Liverpool shirt. Few expected what followed. Salah was a 66/1 shot to win the Golden Boot before a ball was kicked but he became the first player to score 32 goals in a 38-game Premier League season.
It will not be quite such a shock if Salah goes on another scoring spree this time around but as with Harry Kane before him there seems to be a lingering suspicion that this might have been some sort of freak season, never to be repeated. Salah is not even an out-and-out striker, after all. But this argument is flawed. All evidence suggests his scoring is repeatable.
It did not take long to see that Salah was going to score goals for Liverpool – and lots of them. “I remember his first game against Watford,” Jamie Carragher tells MNF Extra.
“It finished 3-3 and he scored but he had so many other chances and with the positions that he took up I think I said on the next Monday Night Football that he was going to score 25 goals.”
The reason for such conviction was not that Salah did the spectacular, although the long-distance lob in the 4-3 win over Manchester City certainly came under that category. What was really impressive was that he found himself in dangerous positions time and time again. It is the curious thing about Salah – he actually misses a lot of good chances.