Liverpool just saw return of Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané combination that could be title key

Liverpool just saw return of Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané combination that could be title key

Liverpool beat Brighton thanks to goals from Luis Díaz and Mohamed Salah. The former's recent form is stirring memories of how well the latter combined with Sadio Mané.

Liverpool had gone four matches without a victory against Brighton prior to its 2-1 win on Sunday. The game had something in common with the Reds’ only other triumph from the last nine clashes with the Seagulls.

The goals were scored by Luis Díaz and Mohamed Salah, just as they were when Liverpool won 2-0 at the AMEX Stadium in 2022. The pair have both netted in the same game on eight occasions, a decent return from the 40 matches in which they’ve shared the pitch for at least an hour.

Or it’s a good record by the standards of most players. As is the case for all current Liverpool forwards, Díaz is compared with his illustrious predecessors in the front three. Salah and Sadio Mané both scored in 45 matches, and while the hit rate is basically the same — with 191 joint appearances for 60+ minutes — it’s an enormous body of work casting quite the shadow.

Despite a largely unfounded reputation for selfishness, Salah assisted 17 goals for Mané, more than he has for any other player at Liverpool. Indeed, only the 21 Roberto Firmino set up for the Egyptian tops that tally in the Jürgen Klopp era.

But assists are a strange metric. They all count the same whether the creator delivers the ball to the scorer for a tap in or whether a simple pass becomes valuable by virtue of the work then put in by the goal-getter.

A better way to assess a partnership’s potency is to see how they link up for Opta-defined big chances, opportunities where “a player should reasonably be expected to score, usually in a one on one scenario or from very close range.” These are unlikely to be created with a nondescript pass a long way from goal whereas an assist sometimes can be.

Liverpool’s top combination for these high value chances since the start of 2018/19 is unsurprisingly Salah and Mané, with the former creating 26 for the latter and the Senegalese international sending 20 in the opposite direction. However, their place atop the standings may not last long. Despite much less playing time together, Salah has generated 37 big chances with Darwin Núñez, with the senior partner teeing up 24 while receiving 13 in return.

Due to a lack of shared pitch time in 2024, their partnership is in something of a dry spell, with the two big chances they generated against Sparta Prague their only output on this front since New Years Day. Fortunately for the Reds, the link up between Díaz and Salah has sprung to life.

This was not a combination that had delivered very much at all in big chance terms either. Until a few weeks ago they had generated just four, all of them from Salah to the Colombian.

Some of them had at least been notable. Their group includes the opening goal of a 4-0 victory over Manchester United in 2022, as well as Liverpool’s first goal of this season, with Díaz scoring at Stamford Bridge. They also linked up at Tottenham in September, both for a big chance which stood and one which was erroneously ruled out due to a seismic VAR error.

But the pairing has almost matched its previous total in just the last two league games. Two minutes after coming on against Manchester City, Salah put Díaz clean through only to see the number seven steer his shot wide of the Anfield Road end goal.