Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Another day, another Mo Salah masterclass.
We should have been searching to find something more novel to write about here, but really it takes too close to a willfully inconsistent focus to ignore the most obvious reason for Liverpool’s brilliant season.
It’s not exactly fair to suggest these are unprecedented levels for Salah, given what he has already achieved. Liverpool. But he has never been better this season and it was another brilliant individual performance on an evening when Liverpool were completely unremarkable.
That’s a huge compliment, by the way. Apart from Salah, it would be difficult to single out any Liverpool player who has produced an individual performance. They were all good, obviously, all did what was expected and expected of them. But Liverpool are now a team for whom a run of six and seven out of 10, boosted by Salah’s now customary nine, is enough to secure an emphatic victory away from home.
West Ham kept the Reds at bay for half an hour, but once Luis Diaz got the ball rolling following a piece of good fortune that saw the ball come back to him, Liverpool got to work.
The second objective will be the one discussed above. Salah cleverly manipulated the offside rules to advance from a perfectly legal offside position seconds later to lift the ball with a provocative spin and flick for Cody to tap in. Sent on the way to Gakpo.
Sky pundits spent half the time debating whether it was meant to be. We are willing to happily apply The Bergkamp Protocol here at this point and accept that this was only intentional due to the particular athlete in question.
West Ham were not innocent in this equation either. 1-0 down after a brief rally in which Mohamed Quddus fired a shot into the base of the post, they fell. The decision to give Salah time to stand in the penalty area, get a foot on the ball and then glance Alphonse Areola before finding the bottom corner felt questionable.
There must be time for that. Another two games Julen Lopetegui’s ultimatumwith Man City and Fulham either side ahead of Villa’s FA Cup clash.
For the second time in barely a week, Liverpool spent much of the second half of a potentially difficult trip to the London shores merely looking for a resounding win, rather than putting in a potentially record-breaking bid if they thought of it. keep As in SpursIt was completely understandable given the time of year and the workload ahead, but annoying nonetheless. Why score only five or six when eight or nine are so clearly on offer? Poor stuff from Arne Slott’s contented coasters, it has to be said.
They still scored two more goals in the second half, one inevitably assisted by Salah who flicked through and then expertly chipped past Diego Jota. This takes his ridiculous numbers for the Premier League season to 17 goals and 13 assists in just 18 games.
This is the eighth game this season in which Salah has scored both a goal and an assist. For an indication of how truly ridiculous this statistic is, Bukayo Saka is the only other player in the Premier League this season to have managed eight assists.
Salah is now three clear of his nearest rival for both goals and assists, while Liverpool’s 45 goals this season are now four more than Spurs, who don’t really count, and seven more than any proper team.
With an eight-point lead over Nottingham Forest because apparently it’s 1979, Liverpool are starting the New Year in a ridiculously rude manner. There is a certain cruel irony in this. Pep’s City is going to total sh*t. The moment Jurgen Klopp left, however, it now looks like a dire Salah-only disaster could potentially reopen the title race, with Arsenal and Chelsea now distant spectators and City barely even in the slot. can deny the spectacular success of the first season.
