Anfield Until The End 17/18

Mohamed Salah: Forward/Midfielder

The first big signing of the season (not that Solanke wasn't big, I mean, he practically guided England to the cup for his age group and then got a personal award . . . anyways), I'm glad to be proven wrong. At first, I thought of him as the same guy that we saw when he first came to Chelsea, a bit like a chicken running around without its head. This would have been up earlier, but Liverpool announced this later than I expected. Sorry to European readers who may be waking up at odd hours to see this right now. He's ours now, so it won't be like waiting with Solanke, he's in Liverpool, he's leaning on things, it's great.

Salah stands at 5'9", just as tall as Sadio Mané, a funny coincidence since they're both wingers. It doesn't really help us in the trying to send bodies forward for a cross or anything, but it's great that he's tall enough to command a presence. If you see in the video, he is good when it comes to crosses. Not like Coutinho's kind of crosses, but he seems to be consistently decent rather than the spottiness we've been treated to these past two seasons. 

Salah is fast, that's for certain. I'm genuinely very excited about how fast he is. Is he as fast as Mané? Don't know yet, but what's certain is that we will get faster as a team, which makes me giddy with excitement, as I said before. He's got a bit of a problem when it comes to defensive work, which is different than our other winger Mané, who goes back to help out whenever he can. I'm sure Klopp will train it into him as soon as he can, but this is something to note. Another thing is, his work rate seems great to me. Although it's obvious that his pace is a part of his game, he works very hard to create chances for himself and his teammates.

Salah plays on both sides of the wing, but as a left footed player (something we haven't been seeing much of), I expect him to be playing on the left wing this coming season even though he shows up a lot on the right wing. He got the most amount of G+A numbers this past season, getting nineteen goals and twelve assists, compared to Philippe's fourteen goals and eleven assists. He's really going to be involved in everything we do up front, an already important part of our matches getting better already. A hard-worker with an eye always toward the goal, I'm just jumping up and down about this.

At £34m, he barely misses being our most expensive player, but will definitely contribute more than him. I'm not sure if this price will weigh on him, as Benteke said it did to him. He asked for the number 11 and got it, giving Firmino the number 9, so this can take some weight off of what may come to a new signing. As he was in this league before, I expect some kind of knowledge about the PL, but I'm not sure I expect Mané's kind of start at the club. The numbers he did get in the Serie A could have been higher had it not been for a certain ex-Man City striker fluffing a bunch of chances, but I expect him to get a good number of goals and assists this season with the people we have. 

He used to play for Chelsea, meaning that he had to have been around some kind of success before coming here, even if he wasn't on the pitch to receive it. I do expect this level of understanding to help him out as we go into CL matches as well as FA and EFL matches, trying to get some much-needed silverware. 

Debate about Mohamed Salah in the comments!