Jurgen Klopp says he is “completely relaxed” about Mohamed Salah’s form as the Liverpool forward struggles to live up to the high standards he set last season.
Salah was named the PFA player of the year in April as he enjoyed an exceptional first season at Anfield, scoring 44 goals and securing the Premier League’s Golden Boot award.
However, he has found the going trickier this season, with three goals to his name so far and just one in his past seven matches.
Salah is likely to be a central figure in the Premier League on Sunday as Liverpool host Manchester City, a team Salah scored against in three separate victories for Klopp’s side last season.
The Egypt international’s chip proved decisive as Liverpool ended City’s unbeaten league record last January in a thrilling 4-3 win, and he also struck in both legs of the Champions League quarter-final victory over Pep Guardiola’s side.
However, since scoring in a 4-0 win over West Ham on the league’s opening weekend, Salah has scored just twice – the winner against Brighton in August and the third in a 3-0 victory over Southampton in September.
Klopp is convinced that Salah will soon be back to his best, which is a warning to City as they prepare for their Anfield return.
The manager said: “Obviously, expectations changed, that’s normal. He set completely new standards last year [for goalscoring], but for all the rest [of his game] it’s what he did last year.
“Nobody expected 10 goals after five, six or seven games [last season], so it was a nice surprise. Each striker could write a book about these moments when you score without knowing how exactly it works, how you did it, with each ball in a perfect way and stuff like that.
“It’s so rare when it happens like that; 98 per cent of a striker’s career is the hardest work and only two per cent is the kind of easy going stuff.
“It’s all good. Last year, I don’t think he was a big story from the beginning to talk about. Then it started to become a slightly positive story, ‘wow, not bad’ and then ‘oh, even better’ and stuff like that. It all was a surprise.
“I am completely relaxed. I didn’t say Mo should relax because he has to work hard, but that’s what he is doing. It is a completely normal situation, nothing to worry about and I am relaxed about it.”
Klopp believes his players have learned from the disappointment of Wednesday’s late 1-0 Champions League defeat by Napoli, which followed four days after a 1-1 draw at Chelsea in the Premier League.
“The timing wasn’t good in the defence, we didn’t adapt to what they did in the right way,” Klopp said.
“After the game it felt much more clear that they deserved to win. The timing was not good because we felt under pressure when we were not under it.
“We made a few wrong decisions where we could have played left, not right, there was a lot of times which was close to being good but no real perfect decision.
“We had three days and make the boys aware of what was wrong – but I won’t forget how we played against Chelsea. We have to stay cool.”
