Mohamed Salah shifted attention away from his own contribution after a match in which he both assisted and converted a penalty. He teed up the fizzing drive which his teammate blasted beyond Jason Steele before scoring himself with a penalty in the 68th minute to complete the comfortable stroll. Despite that direct influence on the scoreline, Salah underlined where he believes Liverpool\u2019s fortunes now rest.<\/p>\n
“I think a cup run depends on his [Szoboszlai\u2019s] performances,” Salah admitted when questioned about Liverpool\u2019s FA Cup aspirations by TNT Sports post-game. “We rely on him so much. This season he is one of the best players in the world.”<\/p>\n
Arne Slot backed the praise in public comments after the game. “I think there are a lot of very good to elite football players in the world, but I definitely agree with Mo that Dom is one of them,” the manager said. Slot also highlighted a broader contribution from Salah beyond goals. “It is very nice to have him on the scoresheet again, but what I like the most is he\u2019s scoring goals\u2014you can almost expect that\u2014but he also helps the team a lot defensively and that is something very positive,” he said.<\/p>\n
The season has exposed a tactical shift. Slot previously managed Salah\u2019s defensive workload, a policy that produced last season\u2019s success when Salah helped fire Liverpool to their second-ever Premier League title. “As long as you rest me defensively, I will provide offensively,” the winger told Slot.<\/p>\n
Salah\u2019s defensive shortcomings were singled out by Marc Cucurella as a weakness Chelsea targeted in October, and those vulnerabilities led Slot to drop him for a period. An Africa Cup of Nations absence further delayed Salah\u2019s return. Since coming back, there has been a noticeable change in his focus.<\/p>\n
The contrast between the two players is evident in their numbers: Salah has 27 appearances, seven goals and eight assists with no club player of the month awards, while Dominik Szoboszlai has 35 appearances, 10 goals, seven assists and three club player of the month awards. The balance between the pair will shape Liverpool\u2019s progress in cup competitions this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Salah shifts the spotlight to Szoboszlai as Liverpool rely on him for cup runs and team balance this<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6883,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,969],"tags":[1211,299,1304],"class_list":["post-6884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-premier-league","tag-africa-cup-of-nations","tag-arne-slot","tag-benching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6884","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=6884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}