John Aldridge has suggested that the pressure of Mo Salah’s current goal drought is getting to the Egyptian forward.
The 62 cap international hasn’t scored since the 3-0 win over Bournemouth on February 9th, and former Reds hero Aldridge has suggested that the weight of expectation is playing on his mind.
Writing in a column for the Liverpool Echo, he said: “For me he seemed to lack conviction and belief at Fulham. At other times he’d be banging them into the corner.
“I know as a goalscorer it can get to you. The spotlight of attention isn’t just here in Liverpool but back home in Egypt where he’s treated like a king. It’s all over the papers there when he doesn’t score. I think it’s playing on his mind and the extra pressure is getting to him.
“He’s loved by the fans here and in his own country and he can’t understand why he isn’t scoring but he just needs one to go in off his backside then all of the sudden the goals look bigger and the keepers look smaller again.”
OPINION
Aldridge is probably right to an extent, but the last thing Liverpool need is for their star man to be cracking under the pressure of a title run in. To be fair to Salah, whether that is the case or not is a matter of debate, and there’s a decent school of thought that things just haven’t been going his way. When your luck’s in, your luck’s in, and the Egyptian king was like Midas last season, with everything he touched turning to gold. In recent weeks, things have been a little different, and it’s almost as if the bounce of the ball and the little pieces of fortune you need to be hitting braces every week just haven’t fallen for him. The issue is that he sets his bar so ridiculously high that when he does occasionally drop beneath that superhuman standard, people talk as if he’s undergoing some kind of crisis. Like Aldridge says, he just needs one to get him up and running again, but the sooner that goal comes, the better.
