Nah, liverpool's gameplan clearly was to try and isolate one of salah or mane on the wing with his defender and hope either guy could start consistently beating his man and force the defence to tilt towards him. Salah was simply much more effective against lodi and koke than mane was against trippier and correa, so liverpool went to salah
Mo Salah
- Thread starter Robbie Boy
- Start date
Life changing fade.
Looks good. 
I thought he can't look more cnutish but he convinced me otherwise.
Turn his head upside-down, he looks Amish.
Quality player
Strange argument putting up numbers to show that Lewa just ‘puts up the numbers’ whereas Salah does more than putting up numbers. In addition to the fact that of all the players on that list, everyone bar Aubameyang has better goals+assists pr game.
Weird season for him. He's still produced fantastic numbers in terms of goals and assists but I've found him so frustrating to watch at times. Always has his head down and is so greedy in the box.
He's been an incredible signing though. I think his first season has muddied expectations a bit. Scoring 40+ in a season is ridiculous but his numbers in the last two years have been pretty good.
He's been an incredible signing though. I think his first season has muddied expectations a bit. Scoring 40+ in a season is ridiculous but his numbers in the last two years have been pretty good.
Greatest distance runner GB has ever produced IMO!!
I reckon he's got an insane goal bonus.
To be fair he tends to only becomes greedy once you're ahead in the game... At which point passing in the box becomes his mortal enemy.
You might be right. I remember the game at Burnley where Mane wanted to punch him at one point for not passing.
The fact we play a lot more defensively compared to that insane season where he got 42 and he’s still putting up great numbers is a testament to how good he’s been. Creates and scores in abundance, yes he can appear frustrating to watch at times but he’s a fabulous player.
Never expected him to turn out so good. Dude was incredible in 2017/18, every touch turned into gold.
Do you? Underlying numbers are basically the same across all 3 seasons
He was just monstrous in 17/18 and fell back to earth since. Still one of the best players in the world obviously
He's a cnut
https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/sadio-mane/leistungsdaten/spieler/200512
Mane is a workhorse up front for them. He drops deep runs his ass off, agile and can dribble, and helps the team win. It's tough to say which one has been the best signing for them.
He would score more goals but he drops into midfield alot.
/watch?v=HuxehLNcz40 He's all over the pitch. Never seems to get tired though. Unbelievable stamina. It's not doping. Some players just have good stamina.
Firmino doesn't have Mane's stamina.
Mane is a workhorse up front for them. He drops deep runs his ass off, agile and can dribble, and helps the team win. It's tough to say which one has been the best signing for them.
He would score more goals but he drops into midfield alot.
/watch?v=HuxehLNcz40 He's all over the pitch. Never seems to get tired though. Unbelievable stamina. It's not doping. Some players just have good stamina.
Firmino doesn't have Mane's stamina.
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A flat track bully, although a very good one it must be said. I don't recall him ever turning up in a big game though.
Although they didn’t win it I thought he was their best player against Atletico when they got knocked out. But other than that it’s seemingly Mane who always plays best in their biggest games.
Mane... it's how Liverpool play and what he is asked to do. At Real Madrid he would score 25 to 30 goals a season. He would do better than Benzema.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...e-Zinedine-Zidane-forced-abandon-pursuit.html
They seem to think differently.
/watch?v=zu1zOKahojQ
/watch?v=2ngNR326dew
You don't accumulate that many points consistently with shit forwards.
Why Klopp has him deep sometimes: /watch?v=9oMwGMEO8is Sometimes he will be converted to playmaker. He would score more goals but it's the way Klopp plays him.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...e-Zinedine-Zidane-forced-abandon-pursuit.html
They seem to think differently.
/watch?v=zu1zOKahojQ
/watch?v=2ngNR326dew
You don't accumulate that many points consistently with shit forwards.
Why Klopp has him deep sometimes: /watch?v=9oMwGMEO8is Sometimes he will be converted to playmaker. He would score more goals but it's the way Klopp plays him.
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Nice haircut. 
still only 28, I reckon he still has a good 4 more years left at his peak.
still only 28, I reckon he still has a good 4 more years left at his peak.Salah is a fan favourite and media darling (feck knows why) so he gets the benefit of stats being selected in his favour and narratives being constructed around those stats. It's true that you really can use stats to spin almost any narrative you want.
You won't see a comparison of 2019/20 PL G/xG (the gold standard quantitative measure of clinical finishing) in a conversation about Salah because he wasn't even in the top 10 this season. Kane, Ings and Auba were the top 3, if I remember correctly, and it wasn't particularly close. Sterling was more clinical than Salah..
Anyway, it always annoyed me when, at the end of Salah's first PL season, almost everyone was already hailing him as world class, best in the league, and so on. Kane had to do it for three straight seasons to receive accolades that still weren't as enthusiastic. I said at the end of that season that Salah was incredibly lucky to take the PL all-time record and that he'd never come close again. So far I've had no cause to rethink.
A great player who's dining out more on his team's reputation and one phenomenal breakout season than his everyday ability. Would be more realistically rated if he played for Spurs because Son would show him up.
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You saw the same with van Dijk. Before he had even finished his first full season at Liverpool, he was being hailed as one of the best defenders in the history of the PL.
I remember caftards who laughed when they heard LVG wanted to sign Mane. Oh well. I think Mane has been better than Salah easily this season
He absolutely wouldn't you're being delusional here.
Mane doesn't have the skillset to do even half of what Benzema does for Madrid.
So Suarez Mk.2. Liverpool seem to have a habit of producing that type of player to be fair to them, and their fans have a habit of overrating them.
United have had his number, but I don't think that's fair going on his record for Liverpool:
v Man City - 8 games, 4 goals, 2 assists
v Spurs - 11 games, 7 goals, 1 assist
v Arsenal - 6 games, 6 goals, 4 assists
Business end of the Champions League (QF stages and later) - 9 games, 6 goals, 4 assists.
He's anything but a flat track bully, and if you think that he is, you've only seen his games against United and not enough of the other ones against top teams - both in the PL and the CL.
To be fair i do mostly watch him against us, but looking at his league stats hes 2 in 6 vs City and Chelsea. Not bad, but not great, and his CL goals come mostly against random teams. Nothing against Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico or Bayern.
Probably not fair to compare him to Suarez, but hes no Aguero.
Those are indeed very good stats.
Agree about the devil’s stat bible. Proof -> Pudding, and good Pudding is hard to quantize, even with gold standards ...
Tbf I think Salah was absolutely brilliant to watch last season, all across the board. Of course it’s easier to shine in a well oiled team, and obviously it’s easier to build a winning machine with brilliant players. To me, he’s had as good a season this year as most attackers, goal count notwithstanding.
Wether Salah, Kane, Mane or Aguero are the better players now or over a number of years ... interesting discussion. I really like all ofthem as players, and really hate that most of them play for despicable teams.
To me, if Rashford, Martial andeventually Greenwood can settle at their level, I’ll be very happy. And I’m as optimistic about that possibility as I’ve ever been.
Aguero? What?
Also Suarez, that the guy with game winning goals in Copa America final and CL final?
I'm more convinced than I was in the Sterling thread that you're speaking absolute rubbish.
Very true, mate. That was pretty frustrating as well.
To engage in football discussion is to know human stupidity: logical fallacies, cognitive biases, psychological effects. Almost every documented error of formal and informal logic can be found in just a few pages of discussion. In the case of VVD, there was a ton of recency bias and hasty generalisation.
Recency bias is the bane of my existence -- well, at least on football forums. The maxim of "you're only as good as your last game" sums up that line of thinking better than I could.
Aguero has a brilliant record against top sides.
Not in Europe he doesn't, not better than Salah
Suarez is genuinely elite though
He’s a fecking baller unfortunately. Liverpool got lucky with Mane and Salah but I’m not complaining about the state of our attack either.
This could also belong in the weird feelings in football thread, but every Liverpool fan I know slates Salah and says he's selfish and overrated but every time I watch him he's great.
He does a lot of things very well, such as creating space for himself (and in the process creating space for our other forwards, something we obviously lacked against Everton after the break when he didn't play), making good runs into the box, being in the right place at the right time, and he's very good in playing a part in the build-up as well.
However I do feel that there are quite a few times that someone else was better positioned yet he went for it himself. Maybe that's a trait of a goalscorer, dunno, and it usually happens when we're well up in games so it's not overly irritating, but he has poor decision making from time to time. And sometimes he does inexplicably fluff some easy chances too.
He's great, world class, but he's not at that 13/14 Suarez level for me and I don't think he ever will. He's probably a (slight) notch above Mane but Mane never irritates me during games, and Salah quite often does.
32 G + 10 A
22 G + 8 A
19 G + 10 A
Even if you use another metric like xG to show he is not as clinical finisher as others it doesn't matter when he's contributing to more than just goals. I don't see the point in comparing him to a ST either as he's playing a different game to them and takes up different positions where he's taking shots that are different - you regularly see him cut inside and shoot from different angles that a ST won't be doing as much. Yes he's frustrating at times and probably should score more but those are still WC numbers (It's only in the PL) and they're better in consitency than someone such as Hazard who people would regularly claim as the best in the PL. He also notched up 22 G + A and 34 G + A at Roma - Serie A and other comps. He's had 30+ G and A in all comps since 16/17 which is brilliant consistency and it doesn't matter who you are playing for with that, the world class players are able to retain that level of consistency and it's absolutely no fluke.
I think it is also fair that everyone called him WC after obtaining 60 G + A in 17/18. Kane managed 46 G + A in the same year and 42 G + A in the year before, I don't remember people not calling him WC in those seasons. It made sense that despite his excellent first goalscoring year (14-15 where he managed 31 goals in all comps) that people were a bit on the fence due to how other English strikers have performed previously. His first season was a level that was obtainable by a average - good player that is having a once in a lifetime season. Once he backed that up in the next year everyone rightly saw him as WC. There won't be an average player that gets 60 G and A which is why there was that level of difference to people calling Salah WC after that season - including what he did for Roma in the two years before.
22 G + 8 A
19 G + 10 A
Even if you use another metric like xG to show he is not as clinical finisher as others it doesn't matter when he's contributing to more than just goals. I don't see the point in comparing him to a ST either as he's playing a different game to them and takes up different positions where he's taking shots that are different - you regularly see him cut inside and shoot from different angles that a ST won't be doing as much. Yes he's frustrating at times and probably should score more but those are still WC numbers (It's only in the PL) and they're better in consitency than someone such as Hazard who people would regularly claim as the best in the PL. He also notched up 22 G + A and 34 G + A at Roma - Serie A and other comps. He's had 30+ G and A in all comps since 16/17 which is brilliant consistency and it doesn't matter who you are playing for with that, the world class players are able to retain that level of consistency and it's absolutely no fluke.
I think it is also fair that everyone called him WC after obtaining 60 G + A in 17/18. Kane managed 46 G + A in the same year and 42 G + A in the year before, I don't remember people not calling him WC in those seasons. It made sense that despite his excellent first goalscoring year (14-15 where he managed 31 goals in all comps) that people were a bit on the fence due to how other English strikers have performed previously. His first season was a level that was obtainable by a average - good player that is having a once in a lifetime season. Once he backed that up in the next year everyone rightly saw him as WC. There won't be an average player that gets 60 G and A which is why there was that level of difference to people calling Salah WC after that season - including what he did for Roma in the two years before.
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