Mo Salah regulates the ball in the penalty area and during a fraction of a second pauses the game around him. Everything in Anfield catches breath and tighter their focus. A short atmosphere of panic grabs the ones who should stop him.
When he moves again, the shape of Liverpool has shifted, the pockets of spaces have appeared, his pass finds Alexis Mac Allister who applies the finish. Newcastle are two goals.
According to his own productive standards, this proved to be a modest contribution from Salah to Liverpool's 20th victory of this Premier League campaign. It goes in the record books as his 17th assist and besides his 25 goals, he means that he was directly involved in 42 of the 66 goals scored by the running leaders of Arne Slot. And those 42 goals and assists have earned 33 points.
Salah is more than ever for Liverpool, which the Americans like to call the most valuable player. It might be a team sport and such, but every team will have one and some will stand out more clearly than others.
Alexander Isak has scored or helped more than half of the 46 Premier League goals from Newcastle. His 24 goals and assists are worth 18 points for Eddie Howe's team, the same as the 21 goals of Chris Wood and assists for Nottingham Forest. Erling Haaland and Ollie Watkins are close behind with goals and assists 16 points worth 16 points. Liam Delap, whose impressive debut season in the top flight has circled larger clubs, has been responsible for almost half of the goals of Ipswich.
However, nobody comes close to Salah. In the era of the Premier League, only Matt Le Tissier registered a larger part of the objectives and assists of his team in the course of a season than Salah.
That was in 1993-94, when Le Tissier scored 25 of the 49 goals of Southampton and assisted nine others, including a spectacular end of the season when saints under Alan Ball escaped the relegation by taking 10 points of their last six games. Le Tissier missed one of the injury and scored eight and registered six assists in the other five.
He flourished under Ball, a world cup winner who gave respect when he arrived in Southampton, stopped training during one of his first sessions and collected the players around Le Tissier to make clear. “This is your best player,” Ball said. 'This is your best chance to get out of trouble.
“I'm going to put it in the middle of the field. If you have the chance to get the ball up, you have to do it. Ask yourself: “Can I get the ball to Le Tiss?” He will do the rest. “And he did it.
And just as Ball did with Le Tissier, Slot has found a way to squeeze the maximum of his best attacking player. Perhaps that is a natural consequence of a more ordered style than under Jurgen Klopp. A little more control and a little less chaos. Liverpool does not play on full throttle for the entire game in every game.
For example, this puts less pressure on the athletes, who can help a player of in thirty. With five substitutions, attackers have become used to fewer minutes.
Yet none of the top scorers of the Premier League played more this season than the 2,483 minutes of Salah. Slot is happy to make changes to the front line, but the outside does not change. He started in every competition match and almost never comes loose.
Moreover, the atmosphere of authority and control over Slot's Liverpool gives their forward players a fraction more time to make the right decision for the goal, whether it is to pass or shoot, or in the case of Salah to practice his genius. His shot conversion rate this season (25 goals of 101 shots at 24.8 percent) is his best for Liverpool and much better than every season since his first (32 goals of 144 shots at 22.2 percent). Last season it was 15.8 percent. The season before it was 15.2 percent.
Salah is not the football player he was when he arrived at the age of 25 from Roma, dancing by tackles on Mazy Dribbels, clear and scoring beautiful solo goals.
He can and does sometimes, but he is eight years older and a marked man for a while. If you want to beat Liverpool, you will come up with a plan to silence Salah.
At 32 Salah understands his profession. He knows how he most likely scores and makes his goals, and the areas of the field where he wants to be. He is still in great physical form. Slot's change of emphasis, more pragmatic and perhaps not so evangelical about a pressure with high intensity with different play patterns, has made Salah more efficient.
He also takes the penalties. Seven in the Premier League this season. Matheus Cunha, who is fifth on this list led by Salah, is responsible for almost 46 percent of the goals scored by wolves without scoring a single penalty.
Salah, despite all his sparkle, is surrounded by quality. Just behind him, perhaps the most creative full-back in world football in Trent Alexander-Arnold. Inside, intelligent midfielders, tactically consciously and with the vision to find him. In the front, pace and slick movement and finishers at the end of the opportunities he creates.
That's the thing about assists. If nobody finishes them, they are just fit, no matter how good they are. And if someone scores, she officially assists, no matter how just. No jokes about Darwin Nunez, please.
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