Salah has lots more to offer | Brentford the true set-piece pioneers?

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Welcome to The Radar, a Sky Sports column in which Nick Wright uses a blend of data and opinion to shed light on need-to-know stories from up and down the Premier League. This week:

🔴 Age is just a number for improving Salah
🆚 Jover, Brentford and a set-piece battle
🔎 A player to watch this weekend

Salah’s best yet to come?

Liverpool face West Ham on Super Sunday buoyed by Mohamed Salah’s new contract. His form has dipped recently, by his ludicrously high standards, but he goes into the season’s final stretch needing only four more goals or assists to break the Premier League record.

If he continues at his current rate, having amassed a scarcely believable 27 goals and 17 assists from 31 games, he will become the first player in the competition’s history to pass the 50-mark. He actually equalled the record for a 38-game season three games ago.

Across his eight campaigns at Liverpool, Salah has become the third-highest scorer in the club’s history, with 243 goals. He is joint-fifth among all players in the Premier League era, on 184. He also has a total of 109 assists, 86 of which have come in the Premier League.

It is some feat to have hit new heights given the levels he was already reaching, but this season he is producing 1.44 goals or assists per 90 minutes, taking his overall average to 1.02 per 90 minutes.

It is more than double the average of Premier League forwards in the same timeframe, which sounds about right given Salah is effectively two players in one. Top of the charts for both goals and assists this season, he is the best scorer and the best creator.

His new contract shifts the focus to what comes next. Salah turns 33 in June. Can he sustain his output? He is on track to overhaul Roger Hunt and close the gap to Ian Rush in Liverpool’s all-time scoring chart but that is assuming he can maintain such an extraordinary rate of productivity for the next two years.

Like every player, he will of course slow down at some point. But happily for Liverpool there are no signs of an imminent physical drop-off. He is covering slightly less distance by design, in order to conserve his energy. But his numbers for sprints are holding up.

Crucially for a player whose explosiveness is key to his effectiveness, it is the same story with his top speeds. His rolling 10-game average is actually higher now, at 32.51 kilometres per hour, than it was in his early months as a Liverpool player in 2017.

Like Cristiano Ronaldo, another modern great who seemingly got better with age, Salah has vital attributes beyond the physical. “He is mentally so strong,” said Arne Slot on Friday. “You need that to be at his level. That is what makes him stand out for me.

Sunday 13th April 1:00pm


Kick off 2:00pm

“He has always been judged as a player, but I also get to see him as a human being. He is a humble person who always wants to work and always puts a lot of effort in. He wants to stay at that level.”

Physically and mentally, he is well equipped to do so.

Brentford are the set-piece pioneers

Thomas Frank was asked how Brentford will cope with Arsenal’s set-pieces on Saturday after Declan Rice added a direct free-kick threat to their repertoire with his extraordinary double against Real Madrid. But the Gunners are not alone in their dead-ball excellence.

In fact, their opponents on Saturday are pioneers in the field.

Brentford became the first club in England to hire a dedicated set-piece coach when they appointed the Italian Gianni Vio in 2015. A year later, he was succeeded by a certain Nicolas Jover, who replaced another former Brentford set-piece coach in Andreas Georgson when he joined Arsenal from Manchester City in 2021. Brentford now have former midfielder Keith Andrews in the role, after his predecessor Bernardo Cueva was poached by Chelsea.

Saturday 12th April 5:00pm


Kick off 5:30pm

Brentford have come to be known as a breeding ground for set-piece coaches under the ownership of Matthew Benham, a former professional gambler who has embraced specialist coaching and applied the same analytical approach at Danish club FC Midtjylland.

Benham has encouraged collaboration between the two clubs. In conversation with Sky Sports in 2021, Mads Buttgereit, a former set-piece coach at FC Midtjylland now working with the German national team, recalled forming a set-piece “study group” with Jover, who he described as a “genius in the way he thinks and creates plans”, during his time at Brentford.

The shared wisdom can now be seen across Europe, with one example being the weaponisation of kick-offs. Earlier this season, Brentford scored a series of goals within the first 40 seconds of games, a few months after Buttgereit had masterminded a goal after only seven seconds, scored by Florian Wirtz in a 2-0 win for Germany against France.

Set-piece coaches can now be found up and down the Premier League but Brentford continue to reap the rewards as early adopters, their built-up expertise helping them amass 54 set-piece goals, excluding penalties, since their promotion.

It is a total which puts them behind only Premier League heavyweights Arsenal, Manchester City and Liverpool since the start of the 2021/22 season. Everton are the only side to have scored a higher share of their goals from set-pieces in that time.

Brentford’s threat will not be lost on Arsenal given Jover’s history. But the numbers are a reminder, nonetheless, that the hosts will not be the only ones asking questions from dead-ball situations at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday.

Player Radar: Who else to keep an eye on

West Ham are finally seeing some return on their investment in Niclas Fullkrug. The 32-year-old striker has had an injury-hit season following his £27m arrival from Borussia Dortmund in August but scored off the bench against Bournemouth last weekend and looks primed to start against Liverpool on Super Sunday.

Live Radar: What’s on Sky this weekend?

Arsenal host Brentford on Saturday Night Football, with coverage starting on Sky Sports Premier League and Main Event from 5pm ahead of the 5.30pm kick-off.

Super Sunday sees Liverpool take on West Ham in the early game, kicking off at 2pm, then it’s Newcastle against Man Utd at 4.30pm. Coverage of that double-header begins on Sky Sports Premier League and Main Event at 1pm.

And don’t miss Monday Night Football, as Bournemouth face Fulham at the King Power Stadium in a big game in the race the European places, with coverage starting at 6.30pm and kick-off at 8pm.

Read last week’s Radar column

Anthony Elanga’s explosive pace was the subject of the column last week, as the Nottingham Forest winger set the Premier League’s second-highest top speed this season. There was also a look at how Arsenal’s Myles Lewis-Skelly helped Gabriel Martinelli shine against Fulham, before the youngster’s starring display against Real Madrid.

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