Usually, I’ve not a lot of time for Murphy as a pundit, but to be fair with him, after we beat Everton, he said that we were looking like a team which could lose games in the next times. I found this statement too defeatist, but as we know now, he was right.
Here, he analyses our current problems with Salah, and of course, indirectly, Trent’s departure and how Slot tries to address his loss.
He’s not our player anymore, so he was being realistic and anyone objective enough could see that our results have mainly been better than our performances. It’s not a big shock that we dropped some points lately.
Salah definitely needs to improve his form though, regardless if he’s positioned a bit narrower or wider. It’s actually one of the rare years (or first time?) when he hasn’t started the season very well. Usually I was impressed how well he hit form immediately at the start of seasons. But age does play a factor and let’s see how his season evolves this time.
He might pick up later, still get to serious numbers (even if they end up being less than usual, we actually won the league when he had statistically his worst, or least good season at the club). Will be interesting to follow, as he had a drop in form a few times straight after coming back from Africa…
The departure of TAA doesn’t account for Mo wafting shit balls in that go straight to the first defender, time after time.
It would help his numbers, and our perception of him, if when he does trivela it onto a striker head they don’t mess up the header.
yeah to be fair that was a great cross that Isak just didn’t get over enough but it’s pretty much the exception to the rule these days.
Let’s also not pretend like Isak’s header was a great chance. Gotta hit the target (his body shape was like a balerina the moment he connected with the ball), but that’s certainly not easy to score. Salah’s chance after Wirtz’s pass is much better (though onto his right foot…).
It’s not the Everton game I would have taken that judgement from. In fact those two games I felt we did ok in that week and did look like we were going click.
We’ve regressed since Soton to the point I think our performances when we had won the title were better and they looked half pissed.
Yeah, I saw this as a good game from the lads at the time. But Murphy was obviously seeing the signs of a decay, and he was proven right.
Good article. Seems to me that Wirtz and Salah have to start working off of one another more, which will be hard if Wirtz is shaded to the left.
Probably jumped a bit on the bandwagon, there was plenty to suggest in other matches. Newcastle seemed most obvious to me something wasn’t quite right.
I didn’t like a big part of the second half against Everton. Being 2 up against that lot at home, if we’re on our serious level I’d expect us to control that game much better than we did.
xG 0.28 but actual goals scored is 0.29 so he is performing better than expected.
No basis for complaints then.
Not compared to last season he isn’t.
Last season is just that - last season. The stats provided are for this season, and they prove he is ahead of expected output.
Yes, he may be out performing his XG, but that means nothing if he isn’t getting in position to score then he isn’t effective.
If his xg is .28 and he is scoring .29 per game, then he is on target to score 11 goals hmmmmmmm
Right now my goal stats are perfectly aligned with my xG for this season
Joe Gomez is as well, XG 0 and he is on target with 0 scored 
Salah’s scored 2 for Egypt
Playing more centrally, off the striker…