New Mo Salah injury 'fears' are enough to give Liverpool fans nightmares

With all the discussion of Liverpool potentially losing Mo Salah at the end of the season, there has been little discussion of what the side would do if they lost him for any stretch of the current season.

Salah has missed 12 games for club and country in this calendar year so far. This is the first time injury has kept him from a football game since 2019. Despite his physical condition, age will always bring this issue around eventually.

Earlier reports stated that Salah may miss Egypt’s latest match against Mauritania due to wanting to avoid injury potential with the poor condition of the Mauritanian pitch.

Masrawy report that speaking after Egypt’s 1-0 win in the Africa Cup of Nations qualifier, Egypt legend-turned-coach Hossam Hossan said,

"I did not want to risk Salah, especially at this sensitive time, and keeping him is important because he is a player of great value.”

“I respect Salah’s and Liverpool’s medical staff’s fears of his injury recurring”, Hassan continued, “especially given the nature of the stadiums in Mauritania.”

Mo Salah injury 'fears'

This sounds, then, like Salah is not injured at present but instead saving himself. This is understandable given both him being in a contract year and with Liverpool having a crucial spell of games coming up in both the League and Europe.

Whether injury recurrence was used as an excuse or not, the concept of Salah being injured for any amount of time is enough to give Liverpool fans nightmares.

Federico Chiesa is a natural replacement on the right-hand side now but is currently facing a bit of injury trouble himself. Moving Diogo Jota out there would necessitate Darwin Nuñez starting up front and it is clear new head coach Arne Slot isn’t too keen on that.

There’s also a question of output - no one in the Premier League has Mo Salah’s goal involvements in the time period since he joined Liverpool. He is talismanic in every sense of the word.

And it is worth considering when figuring out how to replace him if he were to not renew his contract with the club. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that you can’t, so there is no point in trying. A new approach entirely will be needed.