Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah had the fewest touches of any outfield player on the pitch during the Carabao Cup final at Wembley. Seeing the ball only 23 times, he barely got a kick.
In the context of Newcastle United missing first-choice left-back Lewis Hall, with Tino Livramento filling in for him, it is even more surprising. But the Liverpool talisman just never had any space to work in and never wriggled away from his marker.
“I’ve never seen Mo Salah as quiet as I have seen him in this game,” Gary Neville said on Sky Sports commentary. “He has had three touches, 25 minutes into this second half.”
Salah was not the only Liverpool forward to be out of form on the day. Luis Diaz and Diogo Jota were also anonymous and each of the trio struggled to hold the ball up and match the physicality of the Newcastle defense.
Cody Gakpo came off the bench but didn’t look quite fit yet after a recent injury and the fact that Federico Chiesa was the sharpest of the Liverpool attackers spoke volumes for the levels that the others reached. Salah only made one pass into the final third and wasn’t dispossessed once — he just never got the ball in the right areas.
(Image: Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
“Mentally, it’s always difficult to judge,” Arne Slot said during his post-match press conference when trying to explain the performance. “Were we on Tuesday mentally or physically tired? No.
“But this game had nothing to do with running. This game had only to do with playing duels and there was no intensity in terms of running in this game at all. So you cannot even judge it if we were tired yes or no, physically, because we could not press them.
“You can judge a team if they are tired and they press. But there was nothing to press because they played over our press. If they got a goal-kick or if they got a free-kick — which they had quite a lot of in the first half — they every time brought it into our last line, which led to a lot of set-pieces.
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“So, the game was slow and not intense, so it’s difficult to judge for me if we were physically ready. Mentally, that’s always a difficult one. If you look at the result and the performance you might feel it maybe did something to us, but I prefer to look at how the game went.
“This game went exactly the way they wanted it to be: a fight with a lot of duels and a lot of duels through the air. And if we play 10 times a game of football through the air against them, they win it probably nine times because they are a stronger team through the air than us, which led to the first goal and the second goal because the second goal was also a header that they won at the second post that fell for Isak and led to the 2-0.”
Liverpool.com says: Salah was not good in the game but he can’t do everything on his own. At times like that, you need others to step up; unfortunately on this occasion, no one else was able to help him out.
