The MoZone™ – Salah Only Scores From Here

The areas where he remains elite

For about a year before I looked at the data (so, 2022 to 2023), I felt that Mo Salah could no longer score from wider and further out.

Then in 2023 I looked at the data, and, like any good observer, I smugly found that it backed my hunch, so ran with it.

(Sometimes I actually quite like it when the data proves me totally wrong, and I can share it, and learn; albeit sometimes you’d rather it just went away.)

When discussing ageing players who are not quite as good as they were, it doesn’t mean demeaning their achievements or not appreciating what they have given over the years; but you have to put sentiment aside and assess what they can still offer, knowing that at some point it will no longer be enough.

Against Bologna, Salah scored one of his best goals in a long time, and it perfectly underscored what I’ve been saying about what he needs to do, and what he needs to avoid.

I recently shared the image below, of a shot Salah took against Bournemouth, where he used his left foot, which felt inexplicable to me. It is biomechanically impossible to generate power when shooting when your shooting foot is on the floor a microsecond before you actually shoot.

There’s no time and space to properly lift the foot and take a proper shot, and to me, it’s why the right foot was the only option with the ball coming across. All he could do was awkwardly hop and prod.

At other times, Salah does something similar, except with defenders right on top of the shot; such as when cutting inside past a defender, but he hasn’t gone past the defender, and it just hits the defender. (Against Bologna, he waited until he had the time and space to shoot.)

Salah wastes too many chances with these tame left-footed shots (and we can’t quantify the lost goals and never-created chances for others) but we also saw against West Ham that when the ball bounces nicely on his left, he can still hit it with power.

Even then, he didn’t have much backlift, but the ball was coming at him at pace as a fast rebound, so he essentially flat-batted it back into the roof of the net. It was instinctive, and spot-on (indeed, near to the spot).

But look at the glorious backlift on the goal, with the cheeks puffed for extra power (via the laws of physics).

And look at the beautiful space around him, which he worked so well, albeit with the help of runners to his right.

Look at the thunderous follow-through, with almost a hyperextension of the leg.

It makes you want to yell “boof, eat my goal!” like a mad middle-aged man from Norfolk.

Below are reminders of the shot maps I created via understat.com, and I’d noted before these two recent goals – that also both fit within – that Mo can only really now score from a square within the box. (And the goal against Wolves also fit within, as it was the Reds’ first penalty of the season. But you can also see the way Salah side-foots penalties with power due to the proper run-up.)

Green are his goals, and in the other graphic, other colours represent misses.

I’m now calling this, above, the MoZone™.

(The bottom left outlier is when there was no keeper as he’d come flying out and missed the ball, and who was probably somewhere around the letter ‘h’ on the word ‘Salah’. This does not include the three most recent goals, all within the light, square box. These are also all only league shots.)

Below are all his misses in the same time, albeit this was also as of a few games ago.

While most players naturally score more goals closer to goal (the whole point of xG), my sense for shots is that, within reason, distance doesn’t matter as much for elite shooters if they are central and have time to get the shot away. This isn’t some secret, but does get overlooked a lot.

Yet until 2022, Salah scored quite a few outside the MoZone™, across all his clubs.

Beyond 25 yards and it’s almost always speculative, but most players could score a good proportion of free-kicks from 20-23 yards against only a goalkeeper, if no wall was in place.

The time to shoot from distance is when it fully opens up, and then you have be ready, as players tend to then have a lightbulb moment, and you see it suddenly click in their mind, and in that delay, the gap has narrowed.

This wonderful shot was from within the MoZone™, where Salah is still elite; but he has to focus on shooting when there’s time and space, and from within that reasonable range – and getting the power he so often lacks. (Contrast with the power Cody Gakpo gets.)

He had no one close enough to even block, let alone tackle. That’s the time and space to shoot, when a player should not be thinking about anything other than shooting.

The area where Salah remains unique is this strange inside-right position, where he’s almost like Kevin de Bruyne; especially as he can’t quite burst past players with pace, so often the centre-forward or Dominik Szoboszlai will dart ahead, and Salah will lay them in and go for the return, or cross or pass into the box.

He’s gone from a great wide attacker to a penalty box finisher, and deep, semi-wide creator. It’s nice to see him try a few right-footed crosses, too, albeit he won’t really do them at the byline.

But what I also like about the creative Salah, who lays the ball forward, is that he can follow in, as he did against West Ham, and feed on the rebounds, or lay-backs, or all manner of ways to enter the box a bit later with time and space.

All this said, I also noted recently that Salah scored a much lower percentage of Liverpool’s goals than people perceive, in article about how we don’t always remember things in proportion to their actual status:

“Commentators often said ‘who else?’ when Mo Salah scored last season, even though he only scored 17.6% of the Reds’ total goals (25 of 142).

“And presuming that they wouldn’t have said such a thing when someone else took a penalty (as, er, it’s no surprise if the penalty scorer is the penalty taker), he only scored 13.6% of the team’s non-penalty goals (18 of 132); a mere fraction more than Cody Gakpo, for example, and no one said ‘who else?’ when Gakpo scored.

“But no doubt it feels like Salah scored way more than 13.6% of the Reds’ goals last season.”

Had either Cody Gakpo or Darwin Núñez taken the penalties last season (and scored them), they would have had close to 25 goals, and Salah would have been in the teens. The narrative would switch sharply.

(Núñez took a penalty against Chelsea, and naturally, hit the post, as he did three other times in the game. He did score one in the Europa League.)

Of course, Salah was injured for a couple of months, and he also creates a lot more for others than in the past.

And that’s where I think Salah can endure; as going past players, and shooting from distance or wider angles, has left him behind.

He needs to adapt to what he can still do best, and not try to be the player he was when quicker than every full-back, and could make literally 600 sprints per season.

His final ball against Bologna, after a lovely early assist, was largely dreadful (as in the game against Wolves), but in both games I liked that he was trying the right pass; just getting it wrong.

Yet I don’t think he’s irreplaceable, as someone else would come in and do more running and pressing (Salah’s off-the-ball data is almost non-existent in quantifiable terms), creating more chances in other ways, and who may score different kinds of goals.

Someone who is as quick as Salah used to be would also get in behind more, and maybe take on full-backs more.

Plus, Alexis Mac Allister* may even be a better penalty taker, and that’s a quarter of late-era Salah’s goals gone – seven of 25 last season were penalties, with two more missed, whereas in his Liverpool career prior to last season, penalties made up a far lower proportion of his goals – about an eighth, due to James Milner also taking them, and Liverpool not winning a huge amount.

(*As things stand, Mac Allister has a 92.3% penalty career success rate, with just one miss from13; Salah for Liverpool is at 82.9%.)

Liverpool’s best form last season was arguably when Salah was injured, and far from dry up, the goals flowed. They dried up more when he returned and lacked sharpness, albeit it wasn’t solely down to him.

Between 26th December and mid-March when he was back in the team, Liverpool won 17 of 21 games, and scored 56 goals, or three per game.

(And one of the defeats was against all logic in extra-time at Old Trafford, when it should have been a massive win.)

After that, there were just four wins in the final ten games. While Salah wasn’t solely to blame, we saw his first notable injury, and thus his first absence of more than a month (usually how long he was gone for AFCON), and he literally wasn’t missed.

While it would be ideal to see the three main contract issues resolved, I think Conor Bradley could be every bit as good as Trent Alexander-Arnold in the wider right-back role** (his data is better in an all-round sense, and he’s nowhere near his peak yet, with loads more to come), and Virgil van Dijk will be 34 when his contract expires, and is still playing far too much football for club and country (but seems to be as good as ever, if not as fast as ever).

(** Trent is superb at moving infield, but the new system seems to require less of that. His passing remains jaw-dropping, of course, and he seems to be getting quicker and defending better in general, but also seems moodier at times. He’s elite, but there are other ways to play. I want him to stay, but I also don’t want a saga, and only want players to stay if they really want to stay.)

All three are important, clearly; but going back to Bob Paisley, whose task Arne Slot mirrors (replace the irreplaceable) and whose record-breaking start Slot has now just bettered, got rid of pretty much everyone bar Kenny Dalglish before they even got to this age.

I don’t want to spend this season obsessing over The Contract Trio, as the commentator seemed to be doing on TNT Sports, bringing the subject up at least three times.

(He even asked it of Steve McManaman, the first Red to walk on a Bosman; but McManaman had been ‘sold’ to Barcelona for £12m in 1997 – c.£150m in today’s money – only for Barca to string him and Liverpool along, when preferring Rivaldo, with McManaman as the backup. McManaman would have felt used all-round, and then he ran his contract down. The situation more recently has been down to the turnover of various directors of football and the departure of Jürgen Klopp, with all related to one another in complex ways.)

It distracts from the present, and the need to focus on the here and now.

The club needs to plan ahead, as do the players; but we can’t spend the season worrying about what will happen next summer, just like the numpty commenting under the Athletic article on Ryan Gravenberch, saying that Liverpool will be no good without a proper no.6, as if the past nine games count for nothing (and as if this mythical ‘proper no.6’ is an all-conquering hero.)

• Ted F.

He's doing alright but Liverpool still badly lack a proper 6 and will not reach their full potential under Slot until they have one.

Indeed, the ‘proper number six’ has become something to beat the club, its owners and recruitment staff about, whilst ignoring that the best midfielder in the Premier League and Champions League this season has been Gravenberch. It’s the ‘mistake’ from the summer that must be held onto, in the face of all contradictory evidence. Being sensational is merely ‘alright’ if you don’t admit the truth.

The same uncertain future applies to Alisson, who was actually also not missed last season, and where Caoimhín Kelleher actually had slightly better underlying data; and where Giorgi Mamardashvili could be an absolute beast of a keeper at 6’6” and with jaw-dropping data at just 23 (he’s 24 now).

(As long as suitably athletic, then give me a 6’6” keeper every day of the week, in terms of how much more of the goal he can cover. Small keepers, with shorter arms, get away with not saving shots ‘they can’t get near’, when a bigger keeper would simply have done so. If you’re half a foot taller and have longer arms, you can reach the top corners in a way a smaller keeper cannot, and where they also don’t get criticised. I said the same about aerial duels, and centre-backs, and people claimed that Lisandro Martínez is just extra good at jumping. Except he’s in the awful, bottom 4th percentile for aerials won per game, with van Dijk 95th percentile and Ibrahima Konaté 99th, or top percentile; while van Dijk’s aerial duel success rate has been the best in England since he arrived.)

I don’t want to see the club rush any of Salah, Trent, Virgil or Alisson out of the door, but equally, you have to phase out your older players at some point, and any younger ones who don’t want to sign for wages within the structure may be better off taking the payday and seeing if they get the love overseas, especially if the Reds have someone young enough (but not a kid) with world-class potential as back-up.

And I don’t think any of these players would accept the James Milner route of fewer minutes.

(Almost no player has gone on to better things after leaving Liverpool, dating back to Ian Rush in the 1980s, itself a decade after Kevin Keegan was a rare success in Germany in the ‘70s; with McManaman and Fernando Torres winning more, but as squad or struggling players, with individual issues seeing them as far from big successes. Michael Owen instantly regretted leaving, while Sadio Mané, Gini Wijnaldum and Jordan Henderson will have likewise felt their itchy feet cost them badly. Philippe Coutinho’s career absolutely collapsed after fans said it was grossly negligent to sell him. Very few ended up like Xabi Alonso.)

Does anyone now want Fabinho (still only 30!), or Ryan Gravenberch?

Wijnaldum wasn’t offered a new deal due to the pandemic, but he could have asked for a cheaper or year-by-year deal to stay; instead, he took the mega-riches of PSG and flopped, got injured at Roma, and is now in the Saudi league, alongside Fabinho and Roberto Firmino, in a footballing wasteland.

Keeping Wijnaldum and Fabinho would have blocked the pathway to Gravenberch, who only turned 22 at the end of last season, and has been beyond sensational this season; which is no surprise to me to a degree, as a huge fan of the Dutchman, but who so far has probably exceeded my belief in his high ceiling.

And as I said, he’s only just 22. (The next step is consistency, which he’s had for nine games, but it needs extending into a full, all-powerful season, which would be rare at 22; but he can also improve further.)

Players feel irreplaceable, but often it just happens, gradually or suddenly, and people forget that, actually, they weren’t irreplaceable after all.

You’ll always have a game where you think you missed what they’d have offered, as if what they offered remained constant, and any counterfactual can always better if you only imagine the ex-players doing their very best things, and not having their worst games.

Whatever happens beyond the summer of 2025, for the rest of the season I’d like to see Salah sticking to his optimum skills, and playing for the team. And enjoying his football, as fans enjoy him.

Create like KdB from the inside-right channel, and shoot only from the MoZone™.

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