Mohamed Salah is still scoring and creating goals, so is his Liverpool form really a problem?

The Egyptian bagged a superb goal against Genk in the Champions League, and earned an assist for Sadio Mané's strike, but still came in for criticism about his performance

Mo Salah slots home a classy fourth for Liverpool in Genk (Image: Liverpool FC via Getty Images)

On the face of it, Mohamed Salah seems fine. He has four goals and three assists in the Premier League along with three goals and one assist in the Champions League this campaign. But it hasn’t stopped a sense pervading that Liveprool's global icon isn’t quite firing on all cylinders right now.

Former Liverpool defender Stephen Warnock was open in his criticism of last night’s performance, claiming the Egyptian had “been poor by his standards”. There has also been an increasing refrain that it is now Sadio Mané who offers the greatest threat in Liverpool’s attack. “Mané is complete in his work ethic, defensive rate, pressing and in getting back to defend”, argued ex-Liverpool midfielder Danny Murphy, “and it’s easy to see that he does better than Salah in this respect”. There are some grumblings among the Liverpool supporter base about Salah, and there have been for a little while now. But are they justified

In Salah’s first season at Anfield, he generated 20.4 expected goals and assisted another 8.1, working out at 0.88 expected goals per 90 minutes (per Football Reference, with data provided from StatsBomb). Last year was down a bit to 0.71, but this is still a very strong return for a wide forward in any side. But this season? We’re at 0.54. It’s still early in the season, but that’s beginning to look like a worrying trend.

So why is this happening? The biggest factor is that he’s just not attempting as many shots as he used to. His first season in red saw him take 4.4 shots every 90 minutes (per WhoScored). Currently it’s fallen to 3.3. That’s one shot every game that he’s just not taking anymore. What is concerning is that he’s not really adding more chance creation instead. He’s not yet assisted a full expected goal this season. Looking at it this way, Salah just isn’t the explosive scorer and assister he was two years ago