Magical Mo: Salah vs other Premier League forwards this season – what do the stats say? | OneFootball

Last Saturday night , Mohamed Salah scored his 100th Premier League goals for Liverpool and a week ago became the fifth-fastest player to score 100 goals in the league. It is always an incredible feat to achieve for every player and Salah being a winger predominantly makes it even better; it makes him the fastest wide forward to ever achieve it.

After joining Liverpool from Roma back in the summer of 2017, Salah took the Premier League by storm on his return and broke the record for most goals scored in a season by a player scoring 32 goals. Many termed him as a one-season wonder but since then he has made sure to prove his doubters wrong every time he stepped on the pitch. Liverpool have been one of the best teams in the world under Jurgen Klopp, a huge part of that feat goes to Mohamed Salah as well. He has been the best player in the team since his debut in 2017 against Watford and arguably the best player in the league as well.

Since his return to England, no other player has scored more goals than Salah and he for sure does not seem to stop anytime soon. Even in an injury-ravaged mediocre last season, Salah managed to score almost 30 goals in all competitions.

Liverpool have started their campaign in great fashion. They currently sit on top of the Premier League table with four wins and two draws and a win in the opening matchday in UCL. Liverpool are unbeaten in the league since March and if they want to continue their unbeaten streak, Salah has to perform consistently as he has been doing.

Salah has a great start to this season as well with a goal in the Champions League already. He is currently the joint top goal scorer in the Premier League with five goals in six matches. We look at some stats from this season to see where Salah ranks among the other Premier League forwards in terms of different metrics.

Mohamed Salah is the highest goal scorer in the league with five goals tied with Michail Antonio and Jamie Vardy. In terms of expected goals(xG) metric, he leads the charts in the Premier League with the highest xG of 4.230 along with fellow Reds winger Sadio Mane. Salah clearly has overperformed his xG and gets into better goal scoring positions than all other forwards in the league.

Not just a mere goal scorer, Mohamed Salah has also set up his teammates twice already in the league this season; Firmino in the first match against Norwich City and Mane recently against Crystal Palace. He ranks second among all forwards in terms of assists and seventh among all players. With an xA of 1.11, he has overperformed it here as well.

Salah ranks first among all other forwards in terms of expected goal contributions with 5.340 in six matches. With the second most goal contributions in the league, seven he has been better than what is expected of him here too. His closest competitor has been West Ham’s Michail Antonio with eight goal contributions.

He has attempted the most shots in the league (23) and ranks the first in the shots on target metric with 13 on target. More than 55% of his shots have been on target which shows his precision and accuracy near the goal. He has incredibly quick feet and can get shots out even in the smallest of spaces. He has missed four big chances and has been a little less clinical than what he is normally but his accuracy is still unmatchable.

He has scored all his goals inside the box and mostly on the right side of the pitch, also attempting quite a lot around the box. Salah is never shy of taking shots and is a huge threat in front of goal, the above picture clearly shows that.

He has the second-most touches in the opposition penalty area(37) just behind Sadio Mane. The Egyptian is one of the most difficult players to mark and stop from getting into the box. Even if he fails to score, Salah is an intelligent playe near the box and his link up plays with other teammates helps Liverpool create a lot of big chances.

It is actually wonderful to see him compete with all-out centre-forwards in terms of goal scoring even being a winger himself, predominantly playing and spending the majority of the time near the right-wing outside the box, the red area in the above picture shows that. Salah even drops deep to help out in defence and create attacks, this being the area where Liverpool starts the most counterattacks via him.

If not the best, Mohamed Salah is one of the best forwards in the Premier League and the world even this season. Being consistently performing at the optimum level for five seasons now, he has become Mr. Dependable in the red part of Merseyside. Salah is clearly one of the legends at Anfield and in Premier League and Liverpool should hand him a new contract as soon as possible to avoid any future threats.