Mohamed Salah's latest achievement reminds Liverpool what it's already lost
Mohamed Salah is used to reaching remarkable milestones in a Liverpool shirt - he could even achieve another on Wednesday night.
Should the Egyptian net against Southampton he will move level with Billy Liddell’s goal record of 228, making him the joint-fourth highest goalscorer in Liverpool's history. Surpassing Gordon Hodgson’s 241 even seems likely before the end of the season.
Salah’s incredible haul of records include the most goals for Liverpool in a Premier League season, the highest scoring African in the division’s history and becoming the first-ever opposition player to net a EPL hat-trick at Old Trafford.
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But on Saturday he achieved a different sort of feat, one in many ways that underlines the 32-year-old’s full repertoire of skills. Salah’s assist for Cody Gakpo’s second-half header against Fulham was his 13th of the season and 100th in his Liverpool career.
He’s not just a scorer of beautiful goals, but an exceptional provider too. The perfectly flighted cross against Fulham was his eighth assist for Gakpo, the highest number of any player in the current Liverpool squad. Diogo Jota, Darwin Nunez and Luis Diaz are all on five Salah assists, and it’s perhaps not a shock that Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino top the list.
What is a tad surprising is how far ahead ex-Liverpool forwards are of the current batch, with Salah producing 17 assists for Mane and 14 for Firmino. Those numbers indicate just how potent that famous front three was under Jurgen Klopp, and that the current group lacks the same sort of cohesion.
That’s not to say Liverpool’s ‘24/25 forward options are weaker than when the Salah-Firmino-Mane triarchy was in its pomp, but in planning for the team’s inevitable transition the plan focused on investing in more reliable options rather than focusing on three supreme talents. When one of Salah, Firmino or Mane were injured, the stand-in was inevitably a huge downgrade, not a problem that Arne Slot currently faces.
In replacing Firmino and Mane, Liverpool essentially signed four players (Jota, Nunez, Diaz and Gakpo) over a three-year period, with a fifth added in the summer in the form of Federico Chiesa.
That succession planning feels pertinent now, with uncertainty clouding the futures of three key players. For Salah it feels particularly relevant - you can’t replace the sort of numbers he routinely produces; moving on from Firmino and Mane proved that.
Few would claim Liverpool have struggled in that department, but the four replacements for Firmino and Mane have ever been considered like-for-like options, and none of the quintet stir the sort of confidence and assurance in the Anfield crowd that their predecessors did. At various points in their Liverpool careers, questions have been raised about Jota, Nunez, Diaz and Gakpo, the sort that were never asked about Firmino and Mane.
No Liverpool forward in the Premier League era has proved as reliable as Salah and the club hierarchy need remember that amid his ongoing contractual uncertainty. Should Liverpool’s no.11 move on, finding the ideal replacement may well prove impossible.