TIED UP IN NOUGHTS
After a third 0-0 draw in four games Klopp knows he must get Salah scoring again to save season
FEW are faster than Mohamed Salah and few were faster down the Goodison Park tunnel than Mohamed Salah.
When Jurgen Klopp emerged to join his team as most of their number headed towards the knot of Liverpool fans, Salah disappeared.
Salah was surely not ungrateful for the support, just aware his brilliance had deserted him when it had been needed most.
The tightest, often dullest, of matches was always going to be decided by a fine margin of excellence.
And if the current Player of the Year had been in last season’s peak form, the Reds would not now be needing a slip from Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City.
Salah in peak form does not allow Jordan Pickford to psyche him out of a oneon-one scenario.
Salah in peak form does not let a heavy touch give Michael Keane the chance to make a saving tackle. Twice in this game Salah scampered clear in isolation. Rewind 12 months or so and every bookmaker in the land would have offered only prohibitive odds for a goal.
Both times, his touch and control let him down and doors he would once swagger through, closed. Salah was not the only culprit – Fabinho missed a good chance and Joel Matip flunked an inviting header – but the Egyptian knew his class should have made the difference in a fraught, lowquality contest.
He ran riot against Watford at Anfield last Wednesday without scoring – last season he netted four times in the same match – and Kop boss Klopp has nothing but praise for his form.
And that is the way it should be. But in Liverpool’s last seven games, which included the goalless Champions League match against Bayern Munich at Anfield, Salah has scored just once. It is of course not unrelated that five of those seven games have ended in draws.
As Liverpool lean into the final bend and face up to the home stretch, Salah’s magnificence was always going to play a decisive part in the title race.
Slightly, only slightly, it let him down at a Goodison Park happy to celebrate putting a small speed bump on Liverpool’s title road.
Everton, as Klopp said, were “double-motivated,” if not doubletalented.
Liverpool keeper Alisson did not really have a moment’s worry and the best Everton performances came from those with an intent to stop and destroy, the likes of Keane and Idrissa Gueye.
In a lone tussle against Virgil van Dijk and Joel Matip, Blues striker Dominic Calvert-lewin stuck slavishly to the task but there was little
creativity or threat from the home team. And when a rare, dangerous free-kick fell their way late on, Lucas Digne’s wastefulness summed up Everton’s attacking endeavours.
For a World Cup final, this was not much of a game.
The swirling wind on Merseyside did not help but, certainly from Liverpool’s title-chasing point of view, too many were below par.
In midfield Georginio Wijnaldum never got any sort of foothold in the game and up front Sadio Mane was having one of his eccentric days.
And while you could see where he was coming from, Klopp might reflect on his decision to start Divock Origi ahead of the fit-again Firmino and regret it.
Not that Firmino did a great deal in his half-hour, sucked into the mediocrity of an occasion that leaves City in the box seat.
But only just.
This is not a Liverpool team choking – on a day when they did not click, they still should have had enough to win it.
Five of their remaining nine fixtures are at home and their four trips are to Fulham, Southampton, Cardiff and Newcastle.
The duel with City will go down to the wire and it could be one man, one moment, that decides it.
After this, Mohamed Salah will be hoping that man can be him.