Keep Salah on the right, build the rest around it

There’s a temptation to shuffle Mohamed Salah inside and call it flexibility. Truth is, you risk losing the very thing that makes him devastating, and it affects how any striker in front of him gets fed.

The noise about Mohamed Salah playing through the middle never really goes away, does it? But the more you think about what he actually does well, the more it feels like a solution looking for a problem. Salah isn’t a classic No.9, and he’s not a roaming No.10 either. He’s a right-sided attacker who wants the ball, wants to face you up, and wants to get into the box on his own terms.

Salah’s threat starts with the touchline

Salah’s best moments usually begin with him receiving to feet, then driving at his full-back. Either he’s coming inside from the right, or he’s picking it up in that right half-space and creating from there. That’s different to what you need from a central forward, where the job is often about attacking space, spinning in behind, or making those near-post darts when the cross is coming in.

And he’s not a “10” in the floating, everywhere-at-once sense either. A proper playmaking 10 pops up to link the game, take it on the half-turn, combine left, combine right, and keep the whole attack moving. Salah can create, of course he can, but it’s normally from his lane on the right. That’s his platform.

The axis issue: brilliant, but demanding

The bigger point, really, is that Salah tends to need to be the axis of the attack. He’s not built to spend 70 minutes making decoy runs so others can shine. He’s ball dominant, and when the team leans into that, you get output. When you don’t, he can look disconnected and the whole front line can go a bit quiet.

That doesn’t make him a problem. It just means Liverpool have to be honest about what they’re building. If he’s on the pitch, the attack is usually at its best when it’s tilted towards him.

What that means for a striker like Isak

A lot of people talk about Alexander Isak as if he’s not a poacher. He is. The fancy bits are there, the dribbles, the ability to shift wide and link with his back to goal, but the core of his threat is that instinct in the box. The “easy” goals matter, because getting those is a skill, and the best strikers read the drop before anyone else does.

The tactical question is involvement. At Newcastle he’s been the reference point: get him touches, get him combinations, keep feeding him. If a striker like that looks uninvolved in a different set-up, it’s not automatically on the player. It can be about where the ball is going, how early it’s arriving, and whether the side has decided who the attack is actually for.

Compare that with a more all-action forward who happily drops into midfield spaces, plays near the full-back, and stays close to an attacking midfielder. That sort of profile naturally racks up touches and looks “in it” even when the box threat is lower. Different jobs. Different rhythms.

Written by PatrikBurgher: 15 January 2026