The Big Question: Is Salah still a certain starter for Liverpool?

As Liverpool prepare to face Brentford, football writer Ben Bloom looks at the reasons behind star man Mohamed Salah's stuttering start to the season and discusses whether the Reds' talisman can still be considered a guaranteed starter for Arne Slot.

Aware of the gravity of what he was attempting to convey, Sky Sports pundit and Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher seemed to require time to build up to the crux of his sentiment.

Carragher's former club had just lost 2-1 at home to fierce rivals Manchester United, and Mohamed Salah’s run of consecutive Premier League matches without scoring a non-penalty goal had reached seven for the first time in his Liverpool career.

"I don’t think Mo Salah should be the first name on the team sheet," said Carragher.

So far, so uncontroversial.

"He should always be starting at Anfield," the pundit added, before carefully explaining his reasoning. 

Then he delivered his knockout blow: "I don’t think Mo Salah should be starting every game right now."

Since joining Liverpool in 2017, Salah has been a near-permanent fixture in the club’s starting XI – the figurehead attacker around which to build a team.

Yet two days after Carragher’s statement, Arne Slot appeared to agree, benching Salah for the second successive UEFA Champions League game. Troublingly, for the reigning Premier League EA SPORTS Player of the Season, Liverpool appeared a more cohesive unit without the 33-year-old, thumping Eintracht Frankfurt 5-1.

So what happens now? Has Salah's previously guaranteed starting spot now slipped away or is this just a minor blip in the spectacular career of a Liverpool great?

Salah the record-breaker

Salah’s output in 2024/25 was frankly astounding — his strike against Crystal Palace in Liverpool's final Premier League match took his goal involvements tally to 47, equalling Andrew Cole and Alan Shearer’s competition record. Theirs, however, were set in 42-game seasons, while Salah achieved his in a 38-match campaign.

He also became only the third player ever to top the Premier League’s charts for both goals (29) and assists (18) in the same season, despite hitting the woodwork a league-high six times during the campaign.

No one in Europe’s top five leagues bettered his 57 goal involvements in all competitions during the season.

As Liverpool won a record-equalling 20th English league title, Salah was undoubtedly the star, despite uncertainty over his future rumbling in the background for many months until he signed a new contract in April.

That Salah started every Premier League match last season was of little surprise. Rarely has it been any other way. Of his 296 appearances in the competition for Liverpool, 279 have come when starting.

An enviable injury record means he has featured in all but 16 top-flight fixtures across more than eight seasons with the club. When Liverpool play, Salah has always taken a starring role.

Salah's goals have dried up

While last season’s numbers were indeed spectacular, there were signs that Salah's hot streak was tailing off some time before the end of the campaign — he scored just twice in Liverpool's last 11 matches.

This season, he has netted only three goals from 11 club matches across all competitions. Put together it means that, following a run of 32 goals in 42 Liverpool matches, the Egyptian now has just five goals in his last 22.

Salah's PL attacking stats per 90 - last five seasons

Scroll across to see full table on mobile

It is not particularly difficult to find logical reasons for the slump. Salah’s tears after the opening-day victory over AFC Bournemouth - in which he scored a stoppage-time goal - showed just how affected he was by the tragic death of his Liverpool team-mate Diogo Jota a month earlier.

There had been huge upheaval over the summer, with numerous outgoings and incomings as Slot oversaw a major overhaul of his squad. The head coach is evidently still grappling with how best to deploy the abundance of riches at his disposal.

Then there is the departure of Trent Alexander-Arnold, in front of whom Salah played week in, week out for almost the entirety of his Liverpool career. Their on-field rapport was often unrivalled across the top flight.

Last season, Alexander-Arnold played 147 line-breaking passes to Salah in the Premier League - 39 more than any other combination of players. The full-back’s absence is bound to take its toll. Already this campaign, Salah has seen Jeremie Frimpong, Conor Bradley and Dominik Szoboszlai all start games behind him at right-back.

When asked at his pre-match press conference about Salah’s troubles, Slot insisted he had no concerns about the Egyptian’s enduring goalscoring ability, ahead of Saturday evening’s trip to Brentford.

"I don’t know if it's sharpness or not. It’s so difficult for me to say why this is," Slot admitted.

"I could come up with a few reasons, but I think in general in football, players miss chances. Mo is a human being as well, so while we’re not used to him missing chances, let alone a few games in a row, these things can happen.

"What I could come up with is it’s easier, maybe, to finish a chance if you’re 3-1 up than if you’re 1-0 down. But maybe that’s completely not true for him.

"The main thing is that Mo has always scored goals for our club. The last thing I worry about is Mo starting to score goals again, because that’s what he’s done his whole life. That’s what I expect him to do in the upcoming weeks and months for our club."

Who does Slot do with Salah now?

This is not the first time that questions have been asked about whether Salah has started to decline as he approaches the tail end of a wonderful career.

During Salah’s run of one non-penalty goal in his last nine Premier League games of the 2023/24 season, Liverpool's manager at the time, Jurgen Klopp, defended the Egyptian.

"I am not particularly concerned," said Klopp. "That’s what happens to strikers. That’s how it is. We have to go through this, he has to go through that."

Days later, Salah and Klopp had a disagreement as the Egyptian waited to come off the bench against West Ham United, having been left out of the starting XI. Salah later said "there will be fire" if he spoke to reporters after the game.

Yet all that quickly became a distant memory when Salah scored 29 times in the following season’s title win.

This season, Salah has actually created 19 chances for Liverpool, just two fewer than he had produced at the same point last season. He provided a great assist for Ryan Gravenberch in last month’s 2-1 victory over Everton and laid on an inch-perfect cross that Alexander Isak should have scored from in the defeat at Chelsea.

Watch: Salah's assist for Gravenberch v Everton

But all is not as rosy as this time last year. Salah has never averaged fewer shots or had a lower Expected Goals (xG) tally at this stage of a Liverpool season.

Against Frankfurt on Wednesday, Isak and Hugo Ekitike were partnered up front in a 4-4-2 formation, with Florian Wirtz and Cody Gakpo on the flanks. When Salah came off the bench in the 74th minute, he unsuccessfully opted to shoot from a tight angle when a square ball to Wirtz would have presented the German with a tap-in. 

Despite conceding early, Liverpool ran out dominant 5-1 winners, presenting Slot with the dilemma of whether to keep Salah on the bench at Brentford.

With Isak a doubt due to a groin issue and Frimpong - who replaced Salah off the bench in last weekend’s defeat against Man Utd and made an impact - definitely ruled out, it may well be the Egyptian is restored to the starting line-up.

But that does not answer the question of what Slot does when all his players are fit. For the first time in his Liverpool career, Salah’s starting spot seems under threat. Will Carragher’s suggestion be listened to?