Jurgen Klopp has revealed that Mohamed Salah had no desire to lose his status as Liverpool’s penalty-taker despite misses against AFC Bournemouth and Arsenal.
The Reds would have to wait until their 26th game of the Premier League season to be awarded their first spot-kick of the campaign. Coming against the Cherries, the 30-year-old missed the target as Liverpool fell to a 1-0 loss. The Egyptian would then fire off-target again in the 2-2 draw with Arsenal.
However, he returned to scoring ways from 12 yards in the 4-3 victory over Tottenham Hotspur last weekend, and was the match-winner against Fulham as his penalty earned all three points on Wednesday night.
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Admitting he had held talks with Salah about penalty duty, with Fabinho and Trent Alexander-Arnold now waiting in reserve and James Milner looking likely to leave the club this summer, Klopp revealed what he said to the Egyptian when deciding he would remain on spot-kicks.
“(The) Penalty I like a lot because it is a counter-pressing situation,” Klopp told reporters after the game. “Darwin is fully in the situation and gets the pen. Mo finishes it off good as well.
“We had a conversation and he (Mo) wanted to stay the penalty-taker. We had a normal conversation about it and I said, ‘Okay, you are.’
“You don’t feel great in that moment and that’s what he said. ‘I don’t feel right in that moment’, because the pressure obviously increases with the penalties you miss.
“Then Fab or Trent, who are two and three, give the ball to them. (But) He smashed them and turned it around. This today was a super penalty, that’s really clear.
“I think with all the goals Mo scored, we can’t just judge it for two missed and go away from it. That’s what I meant when I said we’ll talk about it. It’s a conversation between two grown-up men.
“He enjoys these situations. The problem is before we missed the pen, we didn’t have one for 28 games or so. We train that, obviously, but it’s a special situation. You cannot. 28 weeks is like four years. It feels like forever and you can’t remember any kind of penalty.
“You miss and it doesn’t feel great. This little break after the Arsenal pen, the talk, the conversation, ‘Shake it off and go from there’. That’s exactly the right thing to do.”
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