Mohamed Salah: Figures show he is curse, blessing to Chelsea

• Liverpool hits jackpot

From Basel, Chelsea picked him at just £12m. He would then go on a loan for just £5m then do so well to be bought by Roma for an extra £15m with beneficial clauses. Now he is back to the EPL for £39M and Chelsea has a percentage to collect due to that ‘benefit clause’. Now, that’s not all. Roma also included the extensional clause that would see Liverpool paying up to £43.9m eventually.

Good stock! As they say in Nigeria, ‘better market’.

Now, we know of some £40-50m players that came to the EPL and couldn’t do good. While Liverpool won’t be looking at their new Jersey Number 11 player to do most of the goals. They expect him to do just his bit. At least replicate the 29 goals in 65 appearances scored at Roma. This was achieved over his two seasons stay at Roma.

This 25 years old Egyptian scored in 23 league matches for Roma. Whenever he scored they never lost, except once. He was also the ice breaker for some of these matches. In 9 of these games, he scored first.

With the facts above, I can guess the kind of start Salah would have in the EPL. I imagine Jurgen Klopp starting him from the bench in the first few matches of next season. Punters can take this to the banks, that in those few matches, he will be the icebreaker.

His first season he scored 14 goals. Then just last season he went a goal higher, 15. He didn’t just score, he assisted in 11 goals. Considering that he is a winger, Man City fans would feel like inviting Jesus Navas for butt flogging session. Even at Liverpool, none of the players scored up to 13 goals last season.

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And before you think of extending that butt-flogging invitation to Coutinho and Firmino, who both had a short-to-goal conversion rate of 18.8 and 15.9 percent respectively last season. Let me also give the Chelsea fans a teaser that could also incite an increase in that flogging list.

Salah whose shot-at-goal conversion rate is 23.4% played Chelsea twice while he was in Roma. And he vented his vengeance in goals. He scored in the 2-1 away victory and got a brace in the 4-2 home win.