Liverpool’s third consecutive defeat has put all eyes on the player of the year’s form, but manager Arne Slott is unlikely to be too concerned with the Egyptian’s start to the season.
Andy Dunn is the Mirror’s chief sportswriter.
For a competition that bills itself as the most exciting, richest, most interesting, most watched, most talked about, toughest, fastest and most skillful competition in the history of club football, the opening fixture of the 2025-26 Premier League season was a rather mediocre one. Almost everyone made it out somehow.
Wolves are the only team without a win, but they’re happy with their coaches, so there hasn’t been any major drama, and while they’ve had a few manager departures, neither one was a true left winger. In terms of form, after seven game days, the three promoted players have managed to pick up six wins in that time, which is half the amount that the three promoted players earned for the entire campaign last season.
Manchester United have received a lot of criticism, but they have improved by two points and four places from this point in the previous campaign. Ahead of Round 8 of the Premier League, Arsenal are one point short of last season’s record, Liverpool and Chelsea are three points short and Manchester City are four points short.
read more: Ibrahima Konate returns from duty in France as Liverpool suffer fresh injuriesread more: Arne Slott points out Florian Wirtz’s struggles and sends a clear message
It’s all so far-fetched that not even VAR could provide a ton of information to make people argue with any sort of certainty. It happens with a relative stagnation of compelling storylines.
And perhaps that’s why some people are excited about Mohamed Salah’s form. Salah scored two goals in a 3-0 win over Djibouti on Wednesday to guarantee Egypt a place in next summer’s World Cup finals. This means that Salah could even be rested when Egypt play their final group game against Guinea-Bissau, although many experts say Salah does not need to be rested.
Suddenly it’s hard to avoid Wayne Rooney’s take on the matter, but he’s not the only one to criticize Salah’s work rate. It would be like being criticized by Picasso for not painting his garden fence regularly.
Salah has always done a token trackback or two, but these are very rare and often draw applause. The same thing happened to Thierry Henry.
If there is such a thing as a city statistic, and I suspect this was one of them, it was calculated that during certain periods of extended Arsenal matches, his own goalkeeper covered more ground than Henry. Henry had two speeds. Deadly slow and deadly fast.
No one is exempt from basic defense work, but there are special cases. Salah is definitely one of them.
From day one, Arne Slott had no illusions about what Salah thought his priorities should be on the football pitch. And considering those priorities don’t include helping his full-backs, the two are getting things going pretty well.
Salah’s two goals and two assists in the Premier League are down from last year, but that is probably due to his uncharacteristically poor decision-making. Even more than usual, he made the wrong choice in a situation where Salah was always threatening. However, it will only be temporary.
If we count this as some kind of slump, the reasons for this will be subtle. No matter how expensive the acquisition, personnel changes will take time to get used to.
And of course, the emotional strain of dealing with the loss of a close friend or teammate should not be underestimated. There may be many more factors.
For example, the opposition may have a fresh and more effective plan for Salah. But the bottom line is that Liverpool and Salah’s season is still in its early stages.
Although they didn’t do spectacularly well thanks to three defeats on the spin, Liverpool’s point ratio was still good enough to win last season’s Premier League. And both of their Premier League defeats were due to late goals.
It’s been an interesting rather than spectacular start to the season, which is perhaps why Salah’s lack of fireworks has garnered so much attention. But don’t worry about it, he will soon burn brightly again.
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