Owen: Mohamed Salah’s hidden attribute

Liverpool legend-turned-pundit Michael Owen believes Mohamed Salah does not get much credit for his ability to bounce off players in the lead up to his goals. The Egypt international had recently netted a sublime hat-trick at Bournemouth and he continued with the same vein of form versus Napoli where he bagged the sole goal in a close 1-0 triumph.

Speaking after the game, Owen praised the physical strength of the former Chelsea man, something which has not been really discussed about in the media, he said: “This was a brilliant individual goal, he’s just shown strength here really, which not many people talk about. People literally bounce off him. He’s only small, he’s only slight, but he’s like a dead weight in many ways. You just bounce off him. Me and Rio [Ferdinand] we’re going through a lot of players who were similar that we tried – even in training – to shoulder barge off the ball or something and you’d end up flying off. He’s that strong, and added together with the skill and speed.”

Salah made a slow start to the current campaign where he was guilty of squandering scoring opportunities and this led to suggestions that he may end up being a one-season wonder. However, he has managed to prove the critics wrong with an impressive run of form over the past couple of months and he is currently the joint-top Premier League scorer with 10 goals already on the board.

Meanwhile, Liverpool recently progressed to the Champions League knockouts by the slenderest of margins after grabbing a 1-0 win over Napoli on Tuesday night. Salah netted the winner in the 34th minute of the game which ensured that the Reds reached the last 16 stage of the competition with the better head-to-head record against Napoli in terms of the number of goals scored.