Jurgen Klopp has dismissed claims that Mo Salah has been told to tweak his style of play in order to operate as an out and out winger.
The Egyptian King was kept quiet during yesterday’s Merseyside derby at Goodison Park and appeared to be less involved in the action than usual.
The German has denied that he’s asked his No. 11 to play wider than usual and insisted that he still wants the former AS Roma man to influence the game by cutting inside and adopting a more central position.
“No, it’s not more than other seasons or whatever, I’m not sure what you see there,” Klopp said (as quoted by This Is Anfield).
“We want to have Mo there in this position but we want to have Mo, and we always had him, more often in central positions as well.
“Today especially we wanted to use the boys a bit more centrally, but we didn’t have a lot of time to train obviously.
“Actually we only recovered, we spoke a lot about it, I’m not sure I was clear enough in the first half what we wanted.
“In the moments when we played, when Mo dropped or when Lucho dropped after two or three passes they were completely free in between the lines because Darwin kept the last line back with his pure presence and they like to drop pretty early.
“But we didn’t do that often enough, you are right. I don’t think in the season he is too often wide, maybe today in a few moments yes. But he could have scored again in the last minute pretty much.”
The Egypt international had a great chance to earn his side all three points in the final minute of the clash with Frank Lampard’s side but was prevented by a quality stop from Jordan Pickford.
The 30-year-old has two goals to his name so far this season as well as also registering two assists.
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With the departure of Sadio Mane to Bayern Munich in the summer and the arrival of Darwin Nunez to Anfield, Liverpool’s new attacking trio are yet to show their full potential.
It is of course early days and time must be afforded until we can expect to see the best from our new No. 27 but it does make you question whether we’re actually struggling rather than benefitting from having an out-and-out striker in the side.
It’s the first real time that Klopp has operated with a proper number nine since he came to Merseyside in 2015 with Divock Origi often used as a super-sub rather than a regular starter.
Bobby Firmino, who has three goals in his last three appearances, had to settle for a spot on the bench yesterday but looked lively when he came on at half-time.
We’re sure Salah will get back to his world-class best in the coming weeks but it does certainly feel that he’s struggling to have a regular impact on games at the moment.
#Ep58 of The Empire of the Kop Podcast: Rating Liverpool’s UCL group, making a new signing… & more!