Eight goals. Three assists. Eight league games. And we were told Mohamed Salah was finished.
Honestly, I still can’t quite believe how quickly some people decided that Salah had nothing left to offer Liverpool.
Yes, his final season at Anfield was difficult. Yes, there were questions about his performances, his future and whether Liverpool should move on.
But looking at what he’s doing now with Trabzonspor, I can’t help wondering whether Liverpool made a massive mistake.
Salah scored again on Monday as Trabzonspor beat Beşiktaş 2-0, taking his Turkish league tally to eight goals in eight appearances. Add his three assists and he has contributed directly to 11 goals in those eight matches.
Eleven goal contributions.
In eight games.
And apparently, he was finished.
You couldn’t make it up.
Salah hasn’t forgotten how to score
The thing that stands out to me isn’t simply that Salah is scoring goals. We already knew he could do that.
It’s how quickly he has settled into his new surroundings and started producing consistently.
At 34, he is still finding the net, creating opportunities for teammates and making a decisive difference to his team’s results.
His latest goal against Beşiktaş helped Trabzonspor secure another victory, continuing an impressive start to his Turkish Super Lig campaign.
Of course, I’m not going to pretend the Turkish league is the Premier League. The quality and demands are different, and we cannot simply assume Salah would have produced exactly the same numbers had he stayed at Liverpool.
But that isn’t the point.
The point is that Salah clearly still has plenty of football left in him.
His movement hasn’t disappeared. His finishing hasn’t disappeared. His instinct for getting into dangerous positions hasn’t disappeared.
And when a player with his record starts producing numbers like these, I think Liverpool supporters are perfectly entitled to ask whether the club moved on too quickly.
Liverpool really did let him go for nothing
This is the part that still bothers me.
Salah left Liverpool at the end of last season after the club and player agreed to end his contract a year early. He subsequently joined Trabzonspor on a free transfer.
Now, I understand the argument for making a change.
Liverpool had to think about the future. Salah was no longer in his early twenties, his final season had been difficult, and the club had decisions to make about the direction of the team.
Those are fair considerations.
But there is a difference between planning for the future and allowing one of the greatest players in your modern history to walk away without a transfer fee.
With a year still remaining on his contract, was letting him leave for nothing really the best outcome Liverpool could have achieved?
That is the question I keep coming back to.
I’m not saying Liverpool should have kept Salah indefinitely. Every great player eventually reaches the end of his time at a club.
But perhaps there was another way to handle it.
Perhaps Liverpool could have explored a transfer rather than agreeing to end the deal early.
Perhaps keeping him for another season would have given the club more time to develop his replacement.
We’ll never know how that alternative would have worked out. But watching him score week after week certainly makes the decision harder to defend.
Imagine having those numbers at Anfield
This is where it gets frustrating for Liverpool supporters.
Imagine having a forward contributing to 11 goals in his first eight league appearances of the season.
Imagine having that experience and finishing available while the rest of the attack tries to find its rhythm.
Liverpool would not necessarily have won every game with Salah in the side, and his performances in Turkey don’t guarantee that he would have reproduced those numbers in England.
But he has always been capable of producing something from very little.
A chance that looks half-hearted suddenly becomes a goal. A loose ball in the box becomes an assist. One moment of concentration from a defender is all he needs.
That is what made him so valuable at Liverpool.
And it is precisely why I never felt comfortable with the suggestion that his time at the top was simply over.
His final season wasn’t good enough by his own extraordinary standards. I can accept that.
But one difficult season should not erase everything a player has achieved, particularly when he is still showing what he can do.
The criticism looks rather silly now
I’m not suggesting every criticism of Salah was wrong.
Liverpool supporters were entitled to question his performances last season. Footballers are judged on what they do on the pitch, and Salah was not immune to that.
But some of the talk went much further than questioning his form. There was a suggestion that he was finished, that Liverpool needed to move on, and that his best days were firmly behind him.
Well, eight goals and three assists in eight league games certainly gives those people something to think about.
Salah has responded in the best possible way: by scoring goals.
He hasn’t needed to argue with anyone or explain himself. He’s simply gone to a new club and got on with playing football.
And I have to admit, I’m enjoying watching it.
Not because I want Liverpool to struggle, but because I think great players deserve a little more respect before they’re written off.
I still miss the Egyptian King
Salah gave Liverpool nine remarkable years, scoring 257 goals in 442 appearances and helping the club win two Premier League titles and the Champions League, among other major trophies.
That is an extraordinary legacy.
He was never going to play at Anfield forever, and supporters should be grateful for what he gave us rather than demanding that he remain there until the very end of his career.
But I also think we’re entitled to question how his departure was handled.
Liverpool lost an exceptional goalscorer without receiving a transfer fee, and Salah is now demonstrating that he can still deliver consistently.
Maybe the club believed it was the right moment to turn the page. Maybe they felt the team needed a different direction.
But I can’t help thinking that, in years to come, this decision might be remembered as one Liverpool could have handled differently.
Eight goals in eight league games. Three assists. Eleven goal contributions.
Call me sentimental, but I’m not ready to accept that Liverpool couldn’t have found a better way to say goodbye to a player like Mohamed Salah.
They told us he was finished.
Salah, meanwhile, is busy reminding everybody exactly who he is.
And I bloody wish he was still doing it in a Liverpool shirt.
Jamie (The Kopite View)
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