Mo Salah greedy? What a load of nonsense, says Robbie Fowler
Legendary Liverpool striker Robbie Fowler defended Mohamed Salah and says every centre-forward needs to be a little selfish to do their job.
Mohamed Salah receiving some stick for not laying the ball off to Sadio Mané in Liverpool’s last league game but Robbie Fowler, the player who fans and even his own team mates was nicknamed ‘God’ during his time at the club, has raced to the Egyptian forward's defence.
Strikers need self-belief
Writing in his column for The Mirror, Fowler, who scored 183 goals during two spells at Liverpool, said he cannot understand what all the fuss is about. “I’ve honestly never heard such nonsense as the stuff that has surrounded this so-called spat between Sadio Mané and Mo Salah. Everyone commenting and talking nonsense about being “greedy” or destroying team spirit, have they never watched football before? Because you can’t be a top-class goal scorer without total belief you will score,” Fowler wrote.
Fowler's 'selfish' screamer at Old Trafford
Fowler, who went on to inherit the No.9 shirt from Ian Rush during his time at Anfield, cited a similar incident when they were both leading the attack for Liverpool against Manchester United. “One of my more famous goals was at Old Trafford where I smashed one past Peter Schmeichel through a sliver of a gap at his near post - made him look stupid, made me look brilliant – classic striker’s goal. Yet Rushie was unmarked in the middle, and the gap was tiny. Should I have passed? Those people slagging off Salah would have you believe so. They’d say I was selfish, was jealous of Ian Rush and the goals he scored,” he recalled. “The thing is, a few minutes before that, I was in the same position – and did pass. And Rushie missed a sitter, from three yards! But I was never going to pass anyway. I saw Schmeichel had just drifted to his left, had the weight on his left foot, and I believed I was good enough to hit that gap between him and the near post. I always believed.
Salah will keep banging them in
“That’s what goal scorers do. They train for it, their whole week on the training ground is spent practising, visualising, working out how to score for every position and the best always believe they can score – from five yards, from 20, from 40. Wherever. Even if it’s easier to pass for a tap-in,” Fowler continued. “I look at Salah’s record and it tells me he’s going to keep doing it. You don’t score that many goals without being what people say is selfish. But what the hell do people want? Do they want him to be a goal scorer or do they want him to be someone who’s always looking to pass? You can’t really have both - Salah can be selfish when he sees the goal, but, to me, that makes him a great goal scorer”.