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Jurgen Klopp is astounded by how few free-kicks Mohamed Salah wins for Liverpool – claiming referees are not whistling often enough.
Liverpool boss Klopp spoke out on the eve of Liverpool’s trip to face in-form Arsenal in the Premier League, hoping Salah will recover from a slight foot injury to feature.
The Egyptian is the league’s top scorer with 20 goals, but he has won just 16 fouls this season, far fewer than many fellow forwards in the competition.
Among the seven leading scorers in the Premier League, only 12-goal Cristiano Ronaldo has been awarded fouls against him as rarely as Salah – the Manchester United man also earning 16 free-kicks.
Salah’s Reds team-mates Sadio Mane and Diogo Jota are among that leading pack and have won 37 and 33 fouls respectively, while Brentford’s 11-goal Ivan Toney has had 59 such decisions given in his favour.
The player with the most fouls awarded in the Premier League this season is Crystal Palace forward Wilfried Zaha, with 72.
“There’s a statistic – I don’t know exactly who did it – that Mo is the one player with the least fouls against him,” Klopp said.
“But not that he didn’t get fouled, it’s just we don’t whistle. If you compare it to other strikers, it’s crazy.
“It’s absolutely crazy how low his number of fouls is against him which the ref whistles. So it means he constantly has contact, going down and you have to go up again, and stuff like this.”
Salah has been involved in 171 of Liverpool’s 180 Premier League games since joining ahead of the 2017-18 season, starting 163 of those and scoring 115 goals.
Klopp knows he has a player who always wants to be involved.
“He’s very professional and very desperate to play each game,” said Klopp.
“So when you ask him [about] the nine games [that he has missed] and maybe I left him out once or twice so he didn’t start the game, so these things are really hard for him. He tries to be on the pitch in training and in games if somehow possible.”
