Mohamed Salah: The greatest attacking season in Premier League history and the numbers that prove it

Mohamed Salah is having the greatest Premier League season for an attacker ever.

Opinion? No. This is a fact.

He sits at the top of the list for the best minute to goal contribution ratio of any Premier League player and he is showing no signs of slowing down.

His 30 goal contributions in 18 appearances means he is averaging a goal or an assist every 52.7 minutes, six fewer than the second-best (Gabriel Jesus with 59.1) and 10 better than Erling Haaland, the closest on the list who had also played more than 1000 minutes.

He took his tally to 17 goals and 13 assists in the Premier League following another goal and two assists in Liverpool’s 5-0 win over West Ham on Sunday.

Salah’s has turned his electric level of output into the new normal and he keeps breaking records in the process.

No player had ever registered a goal and an assist in the same match more than seven times in a single campaign — Salah has done it eight times after only 18 matches.

It is the stuff of fantasy, a FIFA career mode being played on the easiest difficulty level. Yet this is a 32-year-old, at the peak of his powers, doing this in real life, leading Liverpool’s title charge. 

“Mo and the word extraordinary is something I’ve heard a lot in the last six months and he truly deserves this, and probably in the last eight years,” Slot told reporters following Liverpool’s victory at the London Stadium. “I don’t think he keeps surprising us because we know what a player he is and we know what he’s able to do.”

Salah has also become the quickest to reach the 30 goal contributions mark, beating former Liverpool forward Luis Suarez, who took 19 matches. The similarity between the two is the inevitability of a goal or chance coming whenever the ball is at their feet.

Salah’s sensational touch in the build-up to Cody Gakpo’s goal was mesmeric whether he meant it or not. Konstantinos Mavropanos was the victim of that nutmeg and he will not want to see Salah for a long time after he was also left on the floor when the forward danced past him during his dribble to set up Diogo Jota for Liverpool’s fifth. Add on his composed finish and Salah’s performance against West Ham was the latest masterclass to add to his selection.

Salah’s output on an individual level is world-class, though head coaches always try to strike a balance in creating systems whereby individuals can shine and not be over-reliant on too many individuals.

“I like to see this,” said Slot when reflecting on Liverpool having five different scorers away to West Ham, “because, if you only rely on one player when it comes to goals, that is mostly not really helpful, although it’s also nice to have one that scores a lot”.

Salah accounts for 38 per cent of Liverpool’s league goals this season, with only Chris Wood at Nottingham Forest (42 per cent) and Manchester City’s Erling Haaland (44 per cent) scoring a higher proportion of their team’s goals.

The Egypt international has had to carry a lot more of the attack than in previous campaigns, accounting for over a third of Liverpool’s expected goals and big chances (his proportion was last this high in 2020-21), even though his overall volume of shots taken is stable based on his past six seasons. 

Salah’s mentality has developed and matured over time. Advice given to him by Arsene Wenger about staying in the game has stuck with him and he has become a player who, even when not playing well, can produce a match-winning moment when his side need it most.

Slot’s system has also allowed him to get into more attacking positions, illustrated by the increased number of touches he is having in the right channel of the box and in advanced positions out wide.

His exceptional availability in 2024-25 is another contributing factor to Salah’s historic season so far, as has Slot’s comfort with using a strikerless system where Salah and Cody Gakpo hold the width, and Luis Diaz is the nominal No 9 but roams plenty, which increases the demand on Salah to be more of a wide forward than a winger.

While Slot has repeatedly praised Salah’s work ethic, he is being used cleverly, which may be helping to preserve his energy. He is only averaging 113 mins per recovery in the final third this season, his least frequent since the 2018-19 campaign. 

However, Salah is often asked to press more centrally, leaving the opposition full-back free. This is not to say others are doing his running but when Dominik Szoboszlai or Curtis Jones are positioned on that side of the pitch alongside Ryan Gravenberch, as well as Trent Alexander-Arnold, there is plenty of cover to allow him to stay high rather than track back into deep areas, as demonstrated by this still from early in the West Ham win.

It could be coincidental but of Salah’s 17 goals, 15 of them have come in the second half of games. He looks after his body incredibly well but he is looking fresher than his opponents in the later stages of matches and can therefore take advantage.

That positioning has also allowed him to become Liverpool’s outlet. Alongside Gakpo (16), he’s received the most switches in the league this season — last season, he received 20 in total.

Liverpool have gone direct to Salah from the back line to isolate him in one-on-one situations. His dribble completion, which had been trending downwards for the previous three seasons (39%, 34.% then 31.4% respectively from 2021-22 to 2023-24), is back up to 49.2% and he is varying his approach by cutting inside and hitting the byline.  

However, creatively, Liverpool are much more balanced. Salah’s open-play crossing and dribbling numbers are up, though he accounts for 16.3% of Liverpool’s expected assists, which is almost identical to each season since 2018-19 (always between 13.7% and 16%), and his contribution to Liverpool’s big chances created has dropped marginally on last season. Effectively, Salah is assisting more not because he’s shouldering more of the creative burden but because his team-mates are finishing clinically.