People have very short memories in football, as Mo Salah no doubt knows
The Egyptian striker lit up the Premier League and Champions League during his first season with Liverpool, scoring 44 goals for the Reds across all competitions and in doing so proved himself to be the talisman of a resurgent side.
Salah has begun this current season – one in which an unbeaten Liverpool sit joint top of the Premier League table alongside Manchester City – in slightly less electrifying form.
Now, to a sensible person this would simply be attributed to the demands of an injury late last season and an emotionally exhaustive World Cup campaign, all nicely combined with some entirely pointless feuding with his country’s FA over image rights (the Egyptian FA used Salah’s image in an advertising campaign for their official sponsor, WE, something Salah had an understandable issue with considering the fact that he himself has a deal with WE’s competitors Vodafone.
Not everyone on this beautiful planet is sensible though, and Salah’s relatively underwhelming start to the season (four goals in nine league matches) had led some people to claim that perhaps last season was a fluke, that he is nothing more than a flash in the pan.
Salah was asked to discuss this very criticism after his starring performance for Liverpool in their 4-0 victory over Red Star Belgrade on Wednesday, which saw him net his first and second goals of the Champions League campaign, and put Liverpool top of their group ahead of Napoli and Paris Saint-Germain.
“Who?” said the laughing Egyptian striker when asked about those who had questioned and criticised him during his goal drought.
“Who? Who was talking about my goal drought?”
“We know how to play with each other,” he added about his team. “We know our quality and we are happy with each other.”
So there you have it. If you’re going to criticise Mo Salah, be prepared for him to laugh at you.
