Phil Neville heaped praise on Liverpool attacker Mohamed Salah when analysing the contenders for this season’s Premier League Golden Boot.
The former Everton player shared that he thought the 26-year-old winger was developing all the time and that the Reds were lucky to have him.
Neville claimed that Salah had been targeted more often by defenders this season and due to this his teammate Sadio Mane had been able to score more goals then him.
The 2017/18 @CadburyUK #PL Golden Boot winner.
Will @MoSalah finish top of the pile again this season? pic.twitter.com/ZkodSiQJfp
— Premier League (@premierleague) March 25, 2019
“Well Mo Salah has now had two unbelievable seasons and I said at the start of the season I thought he’d find it difficult to replicate what he did last year and that has proven to be the case,” said Neville on the Premier League’s official Twitter account.
“But I think what he has done this year is provided a lot of assists, he’s probably been the most, in terms of attention from defenders, been doubled up on, sometimes three defenders around him.
“Which is probably the reason why Mane has scored more goals this year as it has freed up other players in the team, but with Salah that ability to drift in from the right hand side, you know he’s going to do it if he can and you can’t do anything about it.
“He has played as a centre-forward this season a lot of the time, particularly away from home, so he is developing all the time as a player, his finishing is absolutely world class and Liverpool are lucky to have him.”
OPINION
Neville is full of praise for Salah as not only does he suggest that the player is still improving, he describes the attacker’s finishing ability as world class. The 26-year-old may be perceived by some as having a poor season after blowing everyone away in his 2017/18 campaign but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Salah may not be seeing his shots hit the back of the net as often but he is still doing his part for the team. The winger has scored 20 goals, while assisting nine, in his 41 outings across all competitions. Those stats also don’t take into account that Salah does indirectly assist even more goals, just like Neville suggested, by distracting defenders. Some teams are so focused on marking the attacker out of the game that they forget all about dealing with Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino. Mane has the most of this situation and has scored plenty of important goals in recent weeks as a result. While Salah may be selfishly thinking about improving his own numbers, he is no doubt thrilled that the Reds are still steaming on towards silverware even if he is not in the same clinical form he was last season.
