10 December 19, 2021The Sunday TimesFootball
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Tottenham Hotspur v Liverpool
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but given his age (25) and the qualities
he has, he’ll be at Anfield for a long
time. He is a Liverpool player for the
level they are at, a Champions League
player and there are no question
marks against him.
Roberto Firmino’s return from a
thigh injury is timely, too, and brings
another dimension for Liverpool. It
has always been levelled at him that
he doesn’t score enough goals, but he
still works his socks off, is clever at
creating things for team-mates and
being a thorn in anyone’s side.
Strikers get all the credit, publicity
and headlines because it is the hardest
place to play, but they are not always
the most influential players in a team.
When people ask about the greatest
players you have played with orJames Maddison. Alli has had his time
at Spurs and I don’t see a way back for
him there now.
He threatened to be a top player at
one stage, he burst on the scene and
everyone thought, “What a talent he’s
going to develop into,” but it never
happened.
That should scream to Maddison,
Foden and Mount because a few years
back he was the one that everyone
was talking about, he was going to be
an England regular, but he has not
achieved it and only he knows why
not.
How many managers have tried to
get him going again at Tottenham?
Mauricio Pochettino, Nuno Espírito
Santo, José Mourinho and now Conte,
who seems to have made up his mind
pretty quickly.THE
IRREPLACEABLE
ONE
There were a few
raised eyebrows
about Jota but he is a
Liverpool player for
the level they are at
No Premier League contender relies on
one player quite like Liverpool with Salah
against, it is hard to compare posi-
tions like a goalkeeper and a centre
forward. The real question is: who is
the most influential?
At Liverpool, they often used to
point to Ray Clemence or Bruce
Grobbelaar and say to us, “Thank
your goalkeeper today, he won us the
game.” Aaron Ramsdale has arguably
been Arsenal’s most influential player
this season because he has kept them
in games and won some for them with
the saves he has made.
Tottenham Hotspur have to trust
Antonio Conte to make the football
decisions that can turn them into title
contenders. He will definitely make
improvements, but he is not going to
turn that group of players into one
challenging for the Premier League,
so I would imagine it has been set in
stone that he can sign his own players.
Conte has appeared to either get
his way wherever he has been or have
left if he hasn’t. He didn’t last long at
Chelsea because he wanted to imple-
ment things and have a bigger say.
Wherever he goes I assume that is an
important part of any agreement:
how much say he is going to have on
recruitment and what players comeP
ick any spell of six to eight
weeks so far this season for
Liverpool and subtract
Mohamed Salah’s goals
from it. It is not a black-and-
white exercise, but we can
agree that they would not be
sitting in the top two at the
moment. That is a fear that Jürgen
Klopp will have, that an injury could
leave him without his main man.
Pep Guardiola and Thomas Tuchel
won’t have the same worry. City have
the strongest squad, so I can’t give you
one name where an absence would
have the same impact on them. Chel-
sea have coped without Romelu
Lukaku, so I can’t argue they have a
player who comes into the same
category either.
Salah is unique. If he is out for a
period it could badly damage Liver-
pool’s title challenge. I am convinced
the top three will be separated by who
suffers least from serious injuries.
Imagine the impact if Salah got a ham-
string injury, was out for six to eight
weeks and missed ten games.
In how many games has he been
the difference, either by scoring the
winning goal or the one that puts
them in front in a game they end up
winning easily? The influence he has
had this season has been enormous
and Salah can genuinely claim to be
the best player in the world right now.
Liverpool can probably cope with-out him during the Africa Cup of
Nations next month, but what if he
comes back from the tournament
with an injury? That would be a more
serious situation and when anyone
goes on international duty, you are
praying as a manager that they don’t
come back injured.
If Klopp could have picked the
matches for Salah to miss, he would
have taken a couple of rounds of the
FA Cup and league games at home to
Brentford and away to Crystal Palace.
Those teams will see it as an opportu-
nity, but Klopp knows his players best
and needs his squad men to step up
with Salah and Sadio Mané represent-
ing Egypt and Senegal respectively.
Divock Origi is not normally a
player for Liverpool’s starting line-up.
He is an impact player who has scored
some very important goals and will be
begging for a run of games, an oppor-
tunity to threaten to be in the starting
line-up every week, although I per-
sonally don’t think he can reach that
standard.
In contrast, Diogo Jota got goals
from day one and hit the ground run-
ning. There were a few raised eye-
brows about signing him from Wolver-GRAEME
SOUNESSand go. I am all for that because he is a
football man. Clubs pay an astronomi-
cal amount for a manager, so they
should let them manage.
Instead the modern way is to allow
a director of football to interfere. At
Liverpool or Manchester City, the
manager has the biggest say. At Man-
chester United, football people clearly
haven’t had the biggest say.
Another lesson is Everton, with
some terrible signings since Farhad
Moshiri came in as major shareholder
and went with a director-of-football
model.
Speaking of lessons, Dele Alli’s
decline provides one for aspiring
attacking midfielders such as Phil
Foden, Mason Mount and especiallyLiverpool will
lose Salah to
international
duties at the
Africa Cup of
Nations next
month