Liverpool: The Mohamed Salah disrespect needs to stop

Liverpool right winger Mohamed Salah is one of the best players in the world at his position. He is in the midst of another incredible season in which he could secure the Premier League’s Golden Boot with 20 goals. The Reds would be in serious trouble without Salah, whose goal-scoring has carried the team offensively in an especially challenging year for this club.

Yet when it comes to Team of the Season shouts, Salah is getting snubbed. Even Jamie Carragher apparently did not deem him worthy of the squad, while Gary Neville picked Marcus Rashford over him at the wing position, which is a bad – and potentially biased, given Neville is a United legend – selection.

That Carragher snubbed Salah, though, is more frustrating, because you’d think at least a Liverpool legend would stick up for a current legend of the club who is producing performances of the highest order. But no. He left Salah off, too.

Phil Foden was the selection on the right-hand side of the attack for both Neville and Carragher. While the Manchester City man is an excellent player – not just an excellent young player – it’s really hard to justify his selection when there are a few more important players to the Citizens like Ruben Dias, Kevin de Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan, Riyad Mahrez, and arguably Ederson.

Mohamed Salah has been vital to Liverpool, especially in 2020-21

Meanwhile, in Salah’s case, there is nobody on the Reds who really comes close in terms of importance. There might not even be a single player more important to their team right now than Salah is to Liverpool, with all due respect to the likes of Jack Grealish, Harry Kane, and Bruno Fernandes.

Salah’s 20 goals are 35 percent of his team’s total, per WhoScored.com. The only other player with at least 12 goals to have a percentage contribution of 35 or more is Everton striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin with exactly 35. Calvert-Lewin plays more centrally, is a striker, and has zero assists. Salah has four assists on a team whose leading assist-provider has six. In addition to the goals and assists, the Egyptian forward has 1.4 key passes per game.

We can see that in terms of goals scored and chance-creation, Salah is producing world-class numbers, MVP-level numbers for Liverpool. We should be talking about him as one of the most important players of the season. The Player of the Season is very much fought among Harry Kane, Bruno Fernandes, and Kevin de Bruyne. So I will not mistakenly turn this into a different argument. But Salah’s omission from Teams of the Season is very much glaring.

Liverpool fans certainly respect Salah. They understand what he has done for this team over the years and this season in particular. It is scary to think where the club would be without his 20 goals, which put him just one behind Kane in the Golden Boot race. Salah is an intelligent, explosive goal-scoring winger (or wide-positioned striker, depending on how you view it) with the technique to score any type of goal. He is at the top of his game, and the disrespect he’s received from some pundits is quite extraordinary.