Mohamed Salah and Manchester City - a difference in thinking and in duties
Article published before Liverpool v Manchester City on Sunday, October 3.
Zero, zero, five, five, one, six, zero, six, one, zero. The number of goals Manchester City have scored in their games this season can highlight a boom-or-bust nature.
They have not finished a match with two, three or four yet, but they have run riot four times and drawn a blank on four more.
One, zero, one, one, one, one, one, two. Mohamed Salah has been more consistent himself. Liverpool have scored in every game this season in part because only Burnley have stopped Salah, in a game Jurgen Klopp’s team still won 2-0.
His last 18 goals for Liverpool have come in 17 different games, 17 matches when he ensured they were not shutout.
City’s season will be framed in the context of strikers, of whether they needed Harry Kane or should have bid for Romelu Lukaku. They meet the most prolific of the wingers at Anfield on Sunday.
Salah the relentless scorer
It is partly because Salah keeps on getting into scoring positions: he has outperformed his xG in both the Premier League (five goals from 4.93) and Champions League (three from 2.68) but only just.
Last season, he got 22 top-flight goals from an xG of 21.26. It stems in part from persistence: only one player has had more shots than Salah this season and he is his team-mate, Sadio Mane.
It indicates a difference in thinking and in duties. Ilkay Gundogan has had the most efforts for City this season and his tally of 13 puts him tied for 24th in the division as a whole. Liverpool have three of the top 10, with Diogo Jota in joint eighth.
No City player has more than two goals, whereas three Liverpool footballers have at least three. Salah has had more than twice as many shots on target as any City player. Indeed, he has had 17.8% of Liverpool’s shots whereas no one has had more than 11.4% of City’s.
It is a small sample size, but last year Kevin de Bruyne had the highest share of City’s shots (13.4%) while Salah had 20.0% of Liverpool’s. If it reflects the way Pep Guardiola rotates his attacking players, it shows these are different models.
City have proof theirs can work – last season, none of their players were in the top 15 for attempts on target – but Salah brings more of a guarantee.
In each of Liverpool’s games thus far, the player with the highest xG for them has been either Mane, Salah or Jota. Five different City players have registered the highest expected goals for them in a league match.
If Mane’s misses – he has three goals and an xG of 4.58 - are a reason why Liverpool have underperformed their xG, with 15 goals when the statistics suggest they should have 18.7, Salah’s consistency explains why no one has kept a clean sheet against them.
City's collective effort
City’s overall figures are similar – 12 goals from an xG of 15.3 – but take out the thrashings of Norwich and Arsenal and they have two goals from four games.
In each match, they created enough fine chances. Their xG at Tottenham was 2.41 in a 1-0 defeat, at Leicester it was 3.02 in a 1-0 victory, against Southampton it was 1.47 in a 0-0 draw and, in beating Chelsea 1-0, it was 1.73.
If Liverpool’s strategy revolves around Salah scoring, City rely on a group of others chipping in.
They have had nine different scorers in the Premier League but seven of their band of wingers and attacking midfielders are underperforming their xG: Raheem Sterling (by 0.95), Gundogan (0.53), Jack Grealish (0.50), Ferran Torres (0.48), Riyad Mahrez (0.34), De Bruyne (0.30) and Phil Foden (0.24). Individually, most are by small margins, and Foden has had a solitary shot, but combined, the seven of them are 3.34 under their expected goals.
Salah a standout in shot location
A reason why Salah has become more prolific at Anfield is that he is more of a penalty-box player now. Five of his 35 goals in Serie A came from outside the box. Only six of his 100 for Liverpool have done.
So far this season, Liverpool have outshot City 96-75 from inside the 18-yard area. Only four of Salah’s 24 efforts have come from more than 18 yards. He has had seven efforts with an xG value of at least 0.32 already.
It all underlines that Salah is the winger who produces the numbers of a striker. His shot map is more that of a central player than a right-sided one, with slightly more from that side of the pitch, but not dramatically.
Only five have come outside the width of the six-yard box. There is a marked difference with that of Riyad Mahrez, a left-footed right winger in the City side.
But then Salah has been a winger with a difference. Sterling was similarly prolific for a while and has 66 league goals since the Egyptian returned to the division in 2017.
Mane has 64 and Heung-Min Son 55. Each is impressive, but far behind Salah, the man who brought up a century last week.