Welcome to the Radar, a Sky Sports column in which Nick Wright uses a mix of data and opinion to shed light on need-to-know stories from up and down the Premier League. This week:
Age is just a number for improving Salah
Jover, Brentford and a set piece Battle
a player to view this weekend
Salah is still to come?
Liverpool is opposed to West Ham on Super Sunday, stimulated by the new contract by Mohamed Salah. His form has recently fallen, according to his ridiculously high standards, but he goes into the last part of the season and only needs four goals or assists to break the Premier League record.
If he continues in his current rate, after he has collected a barely credible 27 goals and 17 assists of 31 games, he becomes the first player in the history of the competition that passes the 50-marking. He was even the same as the record for a 38-game season three games ago.
In his eight campaigns in Liverpool, Salah became the third highest score in the history of the club, with 243 goals. He is Joint-Fijde among all players in the Premier League era, at 184. He also has a total of 109 assists, of which 86 have entered the Premier League.
It is an achievement to have achieved new heights, given the levels he already achieved, but this season it produces 1.44 goals or assists per 90 minutes, which means that his overall average is brought to 1.02 per 90 minutes.
It is more than double the average of Premier League attackers in the same time frame, which sounds about the right fact that Salah is effectively two players in one. Top of the graphs for both goals and assists this season, he is the best scorer and the best maker.
His new contract shifts the focus to what comes next. Salah will be 33 in June. Can he maintain his output? He is on schedule to revise Roger Hunt and close the gap for Ian Rush in Liverpool's scoring diagram of all time, but that assumes that he can retain such extraordinary productivity in the coming two years.
Like every player, he will of course delay at some point. But luckily for Liverpool there are no signs of an imminent physical drop-off. He covers a little less distance by design, to maintain his energy. But his figures for sprints hold on.
Crucial for a player whose explosiveness is the key to its effectiveness, it is the same story with his top speeds. His rolling average of 10 competitions is actually higher, at 32.51 kilometers per hour, than in his early months as a Liverpool player in 2017.
Just like Cristiano Ronaldo, another modern size who apparently got better with age, Salah has vital properties beyond the physical. “He is mentally so strong,” said Arne Slot on Friday. “You have to be at its level. That is what strikes him for me.
“He has always been judged as a player, but I also see him as a person. He is a modest person who always wants to work and always makes a lot of effort. He wants to stay at that level.”
Physically and mentally he is well rested to do this.
Brentford are the set piece pioneers
Thomas Frank was asked how Brentford will deal with Arsenal's Set pieces on Saturday after Declan Rice had added a direct free-fick threat to their repertoire with his extraordinary double against Real Madrid. But the Gunners are not only in their excellence of Dead-Ball.
In fact, their opponents are pioneers in the field on Saturday.
Brentford became the first club in England to hire a dedicated set-piece coach when they appointed the Italian Gianni Vio in 2015. A year later he was succeeded by a certain Nicolas Jover, who replaced another former Brentford-piece coach in Andreas Georgson in the role in the role of his role. Pastor Bernardo Cueva was poached by Chelsea.
Brentford has become known as a breeding ground for Set-piece coaches under ownership of Matthew Benham, a former professional gambler who has embraced specialist coaching and applied the same analytical approach to the Danish club FC Midtjylland.
Benham has encouraged cooperation between the two clubs. In a conversation with Sky Sports in 2021, Mads Buttgereit, a former set-piece coach at FC Midtjylland who now worked with the German national team, recalled to form a set piece “Study Group” with Jover, which he described as a “genius in the way he thinks and makes plans”, during his time in Brentford.
The shared wisdom can now be seen throughout Europe, with one example such as the Weapons of Kerstaps. Earlier this season, Brentford scored a series of goals within the first 40 seconds of the matches, a few months after Buttgereit had come up with a goal after just seven seconds, scored by Florian Wirtz in a 2-0 win for Germany against France.
Set-piece coaches can now be found the Premier League up and down, but Brentford continues to pick the rewards like Early Adopters, their accrued expertise that helps them to gain 54 Set documents, excluding penalties, since their promotion.
It is a total that behind them only Premier League has heavyweights Arsenal, Manchester City and Liverpool since the beginning of the 2021/22 season. Everton is the only side that has scored a higher part of their goals of SET documents at that time.
The threat of Brentford will not be lost on Arsenal, given the history of Jover. But the figures are a memory that the hosts will not be the only one who will ask questions from Dead-Ball situations at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday.
Player Radar: Who else should keep an eye on
West Ham finally sees some return on their investment in Niclas Fullkrug. The 32-year-old striker had an injury season after his arrival of £ 27 million from Borussia Dortmund in August, but scored the bank against Bournemouth last weekend and looks ready to start on Super Sunday against Liverpool.
Live Radar: What's on Sky this weekend?
Arsenal-Gastheer Brentford on Saturday Night Football, with cover starting at Sky Sports Premier League and the main event from 5 pm prior to the kick-off of 5.30 pm.
Super Sunday sees Liverpool taking on West Ham in the early match and starts at 2 p.m. and then it is Newcastle against Man Utd at 4.30 p.m. The coverage of that double header starts at Sky Sports Premier League and the main event at 1 p.m.
And don't miss the Monday evening football, because Bournemouth is opposed to Fulham in the King Power Stadium in a big game in the race, the European places, with coverage from 6.30 pm and kick -off at 8 pm.
Read last week's radar column
The explosive pace of Anthony Elanga was the subject of the column last week, because this season the wing player of Nottingham Forest set the second highest top speed of the Premier League. There was also a look at how Arsenal's Myles Lewis-Skelly Gabriel Martinelli helped shine against Fulham, before the in the lead role in the lead against Real Madrid.
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