Chelsea left back Marc Cucurella identified a specific vulnerability in Mohamed Salah\u2019s game and said his side used it to decisive effect in Saturday\u2019s 2\u20131 victory at Stamford Bridge. Cucurella, speaking to Sky Sports after the match, argued Chelsea targeted Salah\u2019s advanced positioning and willingness to remain high up the pitch. \u201cWe always try to attack no matter the situation,\u201d Cucurella explained to Sky Sports postgame. \u201cThe way they play, Salah is always ready to attack, so we knew that crosses could be an advantage. We won the game in this way today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report stresses that Salah\u2019s advanced position is not laziness but a deliberate risk. Keeping him pinned on the last line gives Liverpool a regular outlet for quick counters. That approach helped Liverpool register a league-leading 14 goals in transition on the way to last season\u2019s Premier League title. It also reduced Salah\u2019s defensive workload and conserved his energy for attacking bursts.<\/p>\n
After Liverpool\u2019s title was confirmed last April, Salah discussed how Arne Slot\u2019s reduced defensive demands contributed to his finishing output following J\u00fcrgen Klopp\u2019s exit. \u201cNow I don\u2019t have to defend much,\u201d Salah grinned. \u201cThe tactics are quite different. I said, \u2018As long as you rest me defensively, I will provide offensively,\u2019 so I am glad that [Slot] did. He listened a lot, and you can see the numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those numbers, however, were less convincing on Saturday. Salah missed two relatively presentable opportunities on his return to Stamford Bridge, failing to hit the target on both. He did create a game-high four chances, yet he was restricted to just 35 touches, the fewest of any player to complete 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
Slot dismissed any suggestion of concern about his striker\u2019s display. \u201cToday he had many opportunities to do what he\u2019s done so often, but he\u2019s a human being and it\u2019s not like every chance he gets is always a goal,\u201d the Liverpool boss said. \u201cWe feel sometimes it is because of what he\u2019s done last season and so many times, but he can also have a game where he has chances and a lot of times in promising positions and doesn\u2019t have a goal or an assist.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chelsea exploited Mohamed Salah’s advanced positioning, targeting his defensive restraint to win 2-1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3559,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[299,1100,1115],"class_list":["post-3560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-arne-slot","tag-defence","tag-transition-goals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}