By Chris Bascombe at Anfield
Mohamed Salah must have recurring nightmares and cold sweats about Thursday night European football.
No-one in Liverpool red is doing more to avoid the indignity of relegation from Uefa’s top tier, Salah’s distaste for the Europa League underlined with the goal spree which is retaining his club’s slender hope of Champions League qualification.
With the winning penalty against Fulham, Salah became the first Liverpool player to score in eight consecutive home games. Luis Suárez in 2014 and Gordon Hodgson in the 1920s also scored in eight successive starts for the club, but they missed fixtures in between prolonging their run. Salah – who has six in six in all fixtures – has now struck in every Anfield game since February 13. He must love that Champions League anthem. If his contribution is in vain, the competition will be poorer without him.
While a Norwegian 35 miles from Anfield redefines what is achievable for world-renowned strikers, Salah is diligently and more discreetly making a habit of rewriting his club’s goal records. With his latest, he consolidated Jürgen Klopp’s position in fifth, ready to pounce if the Uniteds from Newcastle and Manchester slip up. For all the changes in Klopp’s forward line, Salah remains reassuringly consistent.
After recent penalty misses against Bournemouth and Arsenal, perhaps Salah feels he owes a debt. He does not. Those extra three points would have made a more compelling argument that Liverpool may yet save their campaign, but it is Salah’s 29 goals which ensured the Kop’s season was not written off sooner. He is likely to hit the 30 landmark for the fourth time in seven years, dashing up the goal charts with the same pace with which he bursts past defenders, justifying the lucrative deal he signed last summer.
Lest there be any doubt about his character, successive penalties also brought extra pressure given discussions about whether he ought to retain spot-kick duties.
“We had a conversation and he wanted to stay as the penalty-taker,” Klopp explained. “We had a normal conversation about it and I said, ‘okay, you are’. The pressure obviously increases with the penalties you miss but he enjoys these situations. The problem is before he missed the pen [against Bournemouth], we didn’t have one for 28 games or so and 28 weeks is like four years.”
Fulham’s contention is that Salah should not have had the opportunity to extend his run, their coach Marco Silva irked by the match-defining decision to penalise Issa Diop for a 39th-minute foul on Darwin Núñez. Diop’s challenge was ungainly enough to make it seem an obvious indiscretion at first glance, and the video assistant did not see enough to overturn it.
"When you lose a game in football to that penalty it is embarrassing,” argued Silva. “When you have the referee then the Var to help the referee, it is embarrassing.”
Klopp was more encouraged by the build-up to it which summed up Núñez’s mixed performance and erratic debut season in English football.
Back to goal, Núñez awkwardly miscontrolled as Fulham’s Tosin Adarabioyo comfortably shrugged him off. As the ball ricocheted to Diop, Núñez dashed to press high, reached the ball first and forced the Fulham centre-back to recklessly swing his boot.
For much of the evening, the Uruguayan’s pluses and minuses overlapped. With Núñez instead of Cody Gakpo as the Liverpool number nine, there is more instinct than control and a visible lack of connectivity. Where Gakpo loves to drop short to knit the midfield with attack, Núñez loves the idea of chasing penetrating passes beyond the back four. That can be successful when Trent Alexander-Arnold is the playmaker, but he must adapt, which is why Klopp kept applauding vociferously on those occasions Núñez dropped deeper to retrieve possession, or hold up play to feed an advancing teammate.
Ultimately, this was an exercise in Liverpool doing just enough, which is in itself an encouraging habit that has eluded them until the past month. Last season, Klopp’s side were able to dominate games and rely on Alisson Becker to do very little exceedingly well. So it was again as the Brazilian goalkeeper was called upon to prevent Carlos Vinicius claiming a late equaliser. “A sensational save,” said Klopp.
It is unlikely to be enough for Liverpool to steal fourth. Their form is better, but still patchy, and there remains a sense of Klopp using these games to fine tune a winning formula before next season. Alexander-Arnold’s virtuosity again stood out, the hybrid midfielder/full-back enjoying himself to such an extent that Klopp must privately regret not experimenting with him in the role earlier.
In the central role, Alexander-Arnold brings extra pace and purpose to Liverpool’s passing, and there is more trust when the centre-halves feed midfield. Liverpool are also more elegant in midfield with Alexander-Arnold more regularly in possession.
So while Klopp still has one eye on the current league table, another is on the start to next season.
If the top four is out of reach, Salah may have to console himself as being the star turn and top goalscorer in next season’s Europa League.