Mohamed Salah may seemingly win games single-handedly for Liverpool, but at the Etihad? Not so much.
The Egyptian has not won a Premier League match at Manchester City since joining Liverpool in 2017, and the same therefore goes for long-standing teammates Virgil van Dijk, Andy Robertson and Alisson Becker.
Trent Alexander-Arnold himself was a 17-year-old pup playing youth football at Liverpool when they last beat City away in the league, a 4-1 win on 21 November 2015 – Jurgen Klopp’s first game against his soon-to-be fiercest of rivals.
In the 10 years since, Liverpool have recorded a Champions League and FA Cup win at the Etihad, but in the league from a possible 24 points they have picked up just four.
Liverpool would arguably welcome another draw on Sunday. They are in a precarious position heading into the weekend, one that feels decisive in this Premier League title race.
Arsenal will have a game in hand over Liverpool for the best part of a month, and on Saturday the Gunners can close the gap to five points with victory over West Ham.
Should Liverpool then lose to City and Arsenal may have a chance to cut the gap to two points, which makes for plenty of variables and football to play, but sits well within the realms of possibility.
Salah therefore needs help. He leads the Premier League charts for goals (24) and assists (15) this season, a contribution of 39 goal involvements that puts him on the cusp of an individual slice of history.
Andy Cole (1993-94) and Alan Shearer (1994-95) share the Premier League record for goal involvements in one season, 47 (both 34 goals and 13 assists), meaning Salah is comfortably on track to overtake the pair.
Salah has also scored 39 per cent of Liverpool’s league goals this season, and assisted a further 24 per cent, meaning he has a hand in almost two-thirds of their goals.
It puts him comfortably on course for the player of the year awards, and is the reason why Liverpool are clear at the top.
However, there are signs of late, not of Salah dipping, but of Liverpool’s other forwards failing to share the load – particularly during Cody Gakpo’s recent absence against Wolves and Aston Villa.
Arne Slot admits it will be a “close call” for Gakpo to feature on Sunday, and having scored seven goals in his last 12 league games, it was only natural Liverpool would miss the ever-improving 25-year-old.
That would not have been the case though had Darwin Nunez or Diogo Jota stepped up.
Nunez was the easy scapegoat against Villa, missing an open goal and squandering a couple of chances later on, but he was not solely responsible for Liverpool recording just three of their 17 shots on target in the 2-2 draw.
Far from it, with Jota also particularly wasteful beyond his assist for Salah’s opener, and the stats show both he and Nunez are Liverpool’s most inaccurate forwards – requiring the most shots per goal and recording the lowest shot accuracy compared to Salah, Gakpo and Luis Diaz.
With Jota, it is hard to shake the feeling he is never 100 per cent fit. Muscular problems have plagued this campaign, in which he has completed 90 minutes in just two league games and twice more in the FA Cup.
That’s four full 90s in his 24 appearances. He is averaging 50 minutes per match, and a return of eight goals across 1,200 minutes in all competitions is not the standard he would want or expect.
And the issue is, it’s nothing new. Jota suffered various injury problems last season, and the season before, with his best campaign in red in 2021-22, when he netted 21 times in 55 games.
Anfield has only seen glimpses of that player since, and if the title race really is coming down to the quality of their attack versus Arsenal’s defence – as Jamie Carragher believes it is – then it really has to be a joint-effort from Liverpool’s attack.
One of Jota or Nunez must rise to the occasion or else Liverpool are in danger of getting caught, somewhat ironically by the club who have zero fit strikers themselves.
It makes the recent links with Newcastle United striker Alexander Isak no surprise.
That would rectify the problem and then some, with Isak’s league haul of 17 goals coming from 65 shots, making for a conversion of a goal every 3.8 shots – better than Salah.
It won’t however do them any good between now and May, and at the Etihad of all places, it will take more than just Salah for Liverpool to grind out a 10-year first.
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