Liverpool legend Steve Nicol has hit out at Reds star Mohamed Salah for “walking around in a daze” this season and ignoring manager Arne Slot’s instructions.
Salah has three goals and three assists in all competitions but looks nowhere near as sharp as he did last season, when he drove Liverpool to the Premier League title.
Alan Shearer believes Salah is currently “suffering” as a result of all the £420m-worth of new arrivals this summer.
Shearer said on The Rest Is Football: “For years now, everything at Liverpool, or most things, have been around Salah and rightly so because when you’re scoring 25, 30, 35 goals, and you can get away with certain things.
READ: Will Arne Slot drop Mohamed Salah after Chelsea star reveals damning Maresca plan?
“But there’s so much going on at Liverpool at the minute, in terms of trying to get Isak in, or (Florian) Wirtz in, or Ekitike in, or trying to find the balance of which fullback he gets in.
“Then, to give them a little bit more protection when Mo doesn’t track back, and he’s suffering a little bit at the minute, there’s no doubt about it.”
Chelsea star Marc Cucurella revealed after the Blues’ 2-1 victory over Liverpool that manager Enzo Maresca had told his side to target the Reds’ right side because of Salah’s lack of defensive work.
And former Liverpool full-back Steve Nicol believe Slot must be telling Salah to track the runs of opposition full-backs, meaning the Egyptian is ignoring his orders while “walking around in a daze”.
“99% of players, when things aren’t going well for them, we understand that it’s fine as long as they work hard,” Nicol told ESPN. “But he seems to be walking around in a daze. Those breaks with Cucurella, Salah is not even thinking about him and why is that?
“It surely cannot be that he doesn’t get it or understand it, and there is certainly no way Arne Slot isn’t telling him to keep an eye on Cucurella as he liked to get forward.
“I’m going to be kind to Mo Salah and we can call it low confidence, but right now his head is scrambled and he is not seeing the clear picture.”
MORE LIVERPOOL COVERAGE ON F365…
👉 Liverpool ‘fear’ exit as Slot ‘lashes out’ at Reds star but manager is blamed for ‘headline treatment’
👉 Gerrard reignites feud with former Liverpool team-mate as Reds got signing ‘badly wrong’
👉 Arsenal or Liverpool? Gary Lineker reveals PL title U-turn in new prediction – ‘I’m swaying towards’
Gary Lineker insists that Salah is “missing” Trent Alexander-Arnold, who left Liverpool to join Real Madrid over the summer.
Lineker said: “In terms of creativity, as much as anything else, I think they’re really missing Trent. Before that, sometimes Trent would go forward and they would, perhaps, get exposed defensively.
“But what he gives you going the other way, it’s impossible to replace. There is not another player I can think of in world football who plays that position [right-back] in the way that he plays it offensively.
“I also think that Mo [Salah] is missing him, that connection that they had. Yes, sometimes they would get exposed in behind, but they would have someone try and cover that position – last season it was mostly [Dominik] Szoboszlai, previous to that would be Jordan Henderson.
“You’ve got to say it was worth his weight in gold going forward, and I always used to say, ‘Stop worrying about him [Alexander-Arnold] making the odd tiny mistake defensively, because what he gives you the other way is incredible.”