Was listening to Gab Marcotti talking about him this morning. He offered quite a balanced view, mentioning that the biggest doubt he had was how he might adapt to a proactive, pressing style of football, rather than the predominantly counter-attacking one he's been playing in recent seasons. Hopefully getting him in in plenty of time for preseason will help in that regard. When comparing him to Mane, he also mentioned that, unlike Mane, he isn't the kind of player to put his foot on the ball and beat an opponent from a standing start. He's more of a 'straight line runner'. Putting aside the images of Markovic that constructs, the question to that would be how effective that will be against the deep, narrow defences we'll be facing most weeks. Adding another player who is willing/able to beat a man in key areas will make a difference though, so i'm hoping he comes in with the confidence to do that. Not nearly enough of that last season, at times.
It's undoubtedly an exciting signing, and one which, on the face of it brings a lot of what we were crying out for last season. One or two questions though, I think. Can't wait to see how we line up with him in the team anyway, and what Klopp's plan will be to get the best from the squad we end up with.
Like most football journalists Marcotti tends to slip into generalisation when talking about players - Marcotti also loves to be 'anti bandwagon'. He's an articulate, interesting commentator but honestly I'd question his tactical or analytical knowledge.
The thing isbeing a good player on the counter attack is not analogous to not being good at breaking down deep lying defences. You can be effective with both which Salah is.
Both Mane and Salah are decent dribblers but they're not possession style dribblers like Coutinho ... however this isn't particularly important
The more I've looked at Salah (footage and numbers) the more bizarre it is how similar he is to Mane.
They both come alive in the final third. Their ability to play good passes at pace, to move like lightening off the ball, to cut in between centre back and full back and so on creates huge problems for defences of all kinds
Both of them take a really big number of shots from inside the box, from dangerous locations - with numbers to rival strikers .. this is really really hard to find in wide forwards.
It's borderline dumb to argue this kind of player isn't effective against low block packed defences
There seems to be this idea that the only way you can cause low block defences is with slide rule passes or beating 3 men. It's not. You also beat them by getting them turned, by creating space and overloads with movement and the threat of movement.
Any LFC fan that saw us with and without Mane shouldn't doubt how effective and impactful Salah will be against the bottom two thirds of this league
