Yeah strange take, like Salah wasn’t playing at Roma and Mane Southampton.
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Not sure if anyone noticed but the Salah to Salah jump would have been all but inconceivable to imagine when he was first linked and upon joining.
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He wasn’t even our (Klopps) first choice.
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Klopp has made a lot of great signings and improved many players. Salah is still way out in front. But Salah at Roma is still significantly better than Raphina at Leeds so you’re not even hoping for a Salah style success story you’re expecting a greater success story than the best success story Klopp and the transfer team have so far delivered. It’s just not realistic to think he’ll get anywhere near that level. No slight on the player. Salah is up there with the likes of Suarez and Henry as the best to have played in the Premier League.
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Nah, the FIFPro guys have made sure that won’t happen by leaving him off that list. Hat-trick a game until the award ceremony
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I think you meant Raphinha at Rennes at least.
To put it more similarly though, taking only the Coupe de France, European competition, and the domestic league to make it comparable, at similar ages, Salah had roughly 155 minutes per goal contribution, relative to 186 for Raphinha. Both Roma and Rennes were third in the league in those respective season, although Rennes made it further in their domestic cup. Not sure how those actually compare directly though, especially in terms of gameplay.
If we compare league results directly, it would be 212 minutes per goal contribution for Raphinha vs 137 minutes per goal contribution for Salah. However, Rennes scored only 38 goals in 28 league matches that season, compared to Roma’s 83 in 38 games. Of those goals, 8 were contributed by Raphinha for a total of 21% of their goals, while Salah contributed 24%.
The next season for Raphinha was his first at Leeds, where he averaged 158 minutes per goal contribution in the league for them (although he did play 6 games for Rennes, contributing 1 goal and 2 assists for 136 minutes per goal contribution. Meanwhile, Salah improved on his previous season, netting 28 goal contributions for 89 minutes per goal contribution, again counting league only. However, this season saw Raphinha up his output to contribute to 24% of Leeds’ goals, while Salah moved up to 31% of Roma’s league goals.
This season, Raphinha has contributed to 8 of Leeds’ 17 goals in the league, for a whopping 47%, while Salah in his comparable age season for us, contributed 51% of our league goals. While Raphinha hasn’t improved on his goal contribution per minute ratio, Salah’s was rather out of the world, upon changing teams. What I might suggest therefore is that Raphinha certainly has the potential to do something, but of course it’s still an unknown as to what he would achieve. But so was Salah when we got him. It’s not like he was a dead-cert. And it’s not like Raphinha is our only option.
You’re also ignoring the fact that Salah will have to be replaced eventually regardless. And when he does it’s not clear we’ll replace him with a like-for-like anyway. To be honest, I’m not quite sure what point you’re trying to make either. Get him to sign an extension at all costs?
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For the record - I’m in the camp that wants to extend Salah’s contract and hope he signs. I don’t necessarily agree that Salah at roma was that much better than Raphina at Leeds right now. I agree that Salah is one of the best the PL has ever seen, but I think in large part that is due to the system, coaching, and players around him at Liverpool. It’s inevitable that we will need to replace players over time, but the best way to ensure success is to have the right components in place to be able to target players with the right skillset - not name value or necessarily even statistical performance levels at another club - in order to keep the overall success rate of the team up there with what the current crop have been doing for the last 4+ seasons.
Salah is not irreplaceable, no-one is.
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If it was as simple as the Klopp factor, better team players etc then Divock would be worth more than Haaland
Salah is amongst the best players of the premier era, up with Suarez, Shearer, Henry etc.
Replacing him will be the second most difficult challenge of the next few years. Replacing Klopp being the most difficult.
Anyway, thats opinion.
Looks like it is becoming a group think session on some issues, and anyone going against the common view is questioned on their football knowledge.
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The bolded here is silly. I specifically talked about skillset, and Divock - while a legend for us - doesn’t have a similar skillset to Salah, or the requisite skillset to be a regular starter for us.
There are players out there with the right set of skills and fitness levels where they could incoporate into the team and contribute goals and assists - maybe not to the level of Salah - but also not to the level of Milan Baros either.
And spare us the groupthink moan please, we’re having a discussion and there are definitely valid points to be made on both ends, but people can be rightly called out for having poor football takes. It’s just a forum on the internet.
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Suarez was by some margin the best player in the league at one point before he left us and we won next to nothing.
Mostly because we had the likes of Mignolet and Lovren in the same team.
One player is not the difference between a team that can fight for honours and one that can’t.
It’s a disservice to the quality we have in the rest of the team to suggest that replacing Salah with another player who is of a high standard (just not current Salah standard) would mean we cannot continue to compete at the levels that we currently are.
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I find that such arguments tend to be made when “I’m so edgy” and “I have no better argument” both apply…
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I dont mind being called out, but when some of the usual suspects pile in it gets a bit tedious.
The Divock piece was silly, and meant to be.
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Is Salah among the best players in the world, maybe the best at the moment?
The point being made is that it will be difficult to replace him.
And we get Rafinha offered as an alternative?
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Do you feel that?
Fair play to you.
Don’t you? I’m often on the wrong side of what the majority on these forums think, and yet I’ve never once considered the possibility of groupthink. I’ve more often considered that I’m just wrong, really…
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Ok
My apologies @redalways
You misunderstand, by “silly” I mean it was a shit analogy, but I was trying to be nice, and failed to hit the mark.
Klopp and the coaching setup we have elevates players, in addition to the system we play and the rest of the team. Obviously, this can only do so much, but it’s why we’ve been able to compete at the very top of world football having not signed a bunch of galacticos. (VVD/Alisson notwithstanding)
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No, if you actually read the comments, Raphina was one example of many who could play in the current set up instead of Salah and we would still be as competitive.
The point isn’t that it’s easy to simply replace Salah with a player and have them come out the end of the season with the same level of stats as Salah, it’s that with the right player, in the same team, we would still be able to compete at the level that we currently are.
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Thanks for the work at the in depth comparison but no I’m specifically talking about Raphina that we would be buying now compared to the Salah we bought at Roma. Yes there was ridiculous improvement for Salah when he moved to us but his last season at Roma he scored and assisted for 28 goal contributions in the league. Raphina doesn’t yet have that many for Leeds still at 23 goal contributions full stop. The Raphina now is not at the level Salah was at when we bought him and the Salah improvement for Salah is the best Klopp and the recruitment team have done.
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And that’s the assumption many find quite daft. There’s no evidence to back it up.
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