BBC pundit rips into ‘non-existent’ Liverpool player who lost 11 duels in Merseyside derby

Liverpool reinforced their position at the summit of the Premier League with a hard-fought Merseyside derby win on Wednesday night, but that didn’t prevent one of their players from being heavily criticised over his performance.

The Reds’ forwards have come in for questioning of late after some poor goal returns in the first three months of 2025, but Diogo Jota chose the perfect occasion to end a run of 10 games without scoring and Luis Diaz put in a man-of-the-match performance on the left flank.

It was actually Mo Salah who had the quietest game of the starting attackers, not getting much change out of the Everton defence despite plenty of endeavour.

Salah slammed for ‘non-existent’ derby display

Former Liverpool defender Stephen Warnock gave quite an unflattering assessement of the Egyptian’s performance after the match while praising one of his teammates.

Speaking on punditry duty for BBC Radio 5 Live, the 43-year-old opined (via The Mirror): “Luis Diaz was the bright spark. Mo Salah was non-existent.”

A harsh assessment of Salah’s performance for Liverpool

Alex Turk of the Daily Express was also scathing of Salah’s ‘ineffective’ display and handed him a lowly 3/10 in his post-match player ratings, although we find that (and Warnock’s criticism) to be rather harsh on the Liverpool winger.

Maybe the statistics don’t make for great reading as the Egyptian lost 11 of his 14 duels, gave away possession 19 times (second-most of any Reds player), didn’t complete any of his dribbles and had only one shot all night (Sofascore).

However, to judge him by those numbers alone would be to ignore the effort that he put in throughout the night, and at least that wasn’t lost on some reporters at Anfield.

The Liverpool Echo‘s Ian Doyle wrote that Salah ‘worked hard’ in the first half especially and ‘kept on’ running at Vitality Mykolenko, while the Daily Mail‘s Lewis Steele stated that the 32-year-old ‘was at the centre of everything good for Liverpool but just lacked that final pass or shot’, awarding him a 7/10 rating.

It mightn’t have been a vintage performance from the Egyptian, but it certainly wasn’t ‘non-existent’ like Warnock was asserting.

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