Mohamed Salah backed to break longest goal drought of Liverpool career

Arne Slot has insisted Mohamed Salah will soon start scoring again as he insisted he is not concerned by the longest Premier League goal drought of the Egyptian’s Liverpool career. Salah has not struck in his last nine top-flight appearances, with his most recent goal in the division coming on 1 November against Aston Villa.But Slot pointed to the 33-year-old’s FA Cup penalty against Brighton to argue that statistic does not matter much and said talk about Salah is merely a consequence of his extraordinary goalscoring feats for Liverpool.Slot said he is not worried by Salah’s form, explaining: “We are used to Mo scoring a lot of goals and at this moment in time that is maybe the biggest difference in his performance and game time. But we also know this has happened before. “I don’t know if it happened nine games in a row but I've had these questions earlier if didn’t score for three or five but I know in the end he always starts scoring again.“He set his own standards and those are so, so, so high and the moment he doesn’t score for a few games people are immediately surprised - that is the biggest compliment he can get. With data you can use it to your advantage or disadvantage but not to use the FA Cup game - if we play a Premier League side – you could argue if that is fair.“But that's the way it works: if we want to highlight something really positive we try to forget one or two games and if we want to highlight something negative we can try to forget one or two games as well. Three games ago he had an assist and a goal against a very good Premier League team, Brighton, so that is the reality and then you can change data and say he did not score in nine Premier League games.” Slot also feels that all of his forward line are short of goals, adding: “The focus is totally on him because of everything he did for the club but Hugo [Ekitike] and Cody [Gakpo] haven’t scored that many goals recently as well.” Liverpool host West Ham on Saturday and are set to be without Florian Wirtz, who missed last week’s win at Nottingham Forest after suffering a back injury in the warm-up while Slot is not sure if he will be back in time to face Wolves on Tuesday.Slot added: “I don’t expect Florian to be available [against West Ham], so that is a disappointment and also something I didn’t expect after last week, but sometimes that is how things can evolve, and this time not in a positive way. Right-back Jeremie Frimpong is back in contention after missing five games. He was injured in the 6-0 win over Qarabag.