Mohamed Salah played his first game since announcing his departure from Liverpool, but things couldn’t get any worse for the Egyptian at Manchester City
Mohamed Salah endured a nightmare afternoon against Manchester City (Image: PA)
Ally McCoist described Mohamed Salah’s performance against Manchester City as “sad” after Liverpool were eliminated in the FA Cup quarter-finals. Almost two weeks after announcing his departure from the Reds, Salah played in Manchester’s Blue Side against Cityzens.
He has less than 12 games left in his Liverpool career and many expected him to put in a great performance against Josep Guardiola’s side. However, in front of the goal, he was just as shy as before the announcement.
He hesitated in front of goal in the first half and attacked hard, but his toe-toe shot was canceled out by James Trafford. With Erling Haaland’s hat-trick and Antoine Semenho’s superb finish giving Liverpool a 4-0 lead, Salah had a chance from the penalty spot.
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The Egyptian’s spot-kick lacked precision and power, but Trafford’s prediction was correct and his shot was easily saved. McCoist said he was left with an unpleasant feeling after the England international convincingly denied the former Chelsea forward’s equalizer.
He told TNT Sports: “I didn’t like him. I didn’t like him at all. It’s a shame because he seems like a shadow of the guy who brightened up this league and this country.”
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“It’s a shame to see him retire like this. He doesn’t look like a confident guy or a confident player at the moment.”
Salah signed a new contract with Liverpool after scoring 29 goals and providing 18 assists in 38 Premier League games last season.
He wasn’t all that prolific in what would be his final season. Salah has scored 10 goals and provided nine assists in all competitions, which is below his usual standards.
His campaign was also marred by a bitter public falling out with Liverpool manager Arne Slott just before the start of the African Cup of Nations. Speaking ahead of the match against City, Slott admitted he had no regrets about his decisions leading up to the contest.
He said, “Yeah, I look back on this season and I think I made some decisions that could have been better, but Mo and I haven’t talked about this specific thing. I don’t regret a lot of things we did in the little bit more than a year and a half we were together.”
Salah was sent off in the 78th minute and replaced by Federico Chiesa (Image: AFP or licensor)
“Again, there is an assumption that if he is not playing he would want to leave and that is the premise, but he would have left a year and a half ago. I remember him leaving West Ham when he was not playing.”
“I wasn’t there. He didn’t decide to leave (Salah had a falling out with Jurgen Klopp). If he doesn’t play these games and suddenly wants to leave, that’s an assumption, which may or may not be true.”
“But as history has shown, he didn’t do that before and then had a great season.”
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