Mo Salah is a big fan of £40m Liverpool target who outshone Reds star in 'unbelievable performance'

One wonders if, in some secret location, there exits a support group for PTSD-suffering full-backs to talk through their post-Liverpool trauma and the nightmares haunted by the spectre of Mo Salah.

The sight of a shadowy figure looming ominously in the dark corner of your bedroom is terrifying enough. But not nearly as scary as seeing the whites of Mo Salah’s eyes as he breezes past you on the wing before pulling further clear in the Golden Boot race.

With 27 goals and 18 assists in just 33 Premier League starts this season, the evergreen Egyptian is producing all-timer numbers as Liverpool close in on a second-ever top-flight title.

But there remains one full-back who, for whatever reason, Salah just can’t seem to shake.

And, while Milos Kerkez is the left-back most frequently linked with Liverpool, there are some at Anfield who would prefer to pair Salah and Antonee Robinson up at Anfield with the £40 million-rated Fulham speedster viewed by some as the preferred option.

Football correspondent Graeme Bailey informed RTK that Robinson is a summer target for Liverpool.

The consensus around Robinson, meanwhile, is that he is currently the finest left-back the Premier League has to offer.

Andy Robertson’s quite devastating decline is a major factor in that, of course, while a 27-year-old Robinson is also seen more as a readymade starter at Liverpool than a ‘project’ sort of addition in Kerkez.

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Now, Liverpool’s interest in the former Everton junior goes back a while. The runaway Premier League leaders have had plenty of chances to watch Robinson up close during his ten meetings with the Reds since the beginning of the 2020/21 campaign.

And when you consider that Mo Salah has not even registered a shot on target up against Antonee Robinson this season – let alone a goal – you can see why the one-time Wigan Athletic flyer has picked up plenty of admirers on Merseyside.

Photo by Harry Murphy – Danehouse/Getty Images

In fact, you have to go back to March 2023 to find Salah’s last goal against Fulham. Even that came from the penalty spot. In the four games since, the usually-irrepressible winger has found himself pretty well controlled by a man who, if he decided to sell self-help books to Premier League footballers on dealing with Mo Salah, would make a mint.

“We played Liverpool in the first game of the [2022/23] season,” Robinson recalls, in conversation with The Athletic. “We drew 2-2.

“I remember saying to my friends, who are all big Liverpool fans and came down because it was around my birthday; ‘Lads, if Salah scores or gets an assist this game, I’ll pay for dinner tonight’. So I put a bit of added pressure on myself. And he did [score], annoyingly.

“But I remember him saying to me midway through the game; ‘How old are you?’. So he didn’t really know who I was! I must have been 24, 25. He just nodded and carried on with the game.

“Then, after the game, I asked for his shirt, so we swapped shirts and we were just chatting and he was like; ‘You were the best player this game. Keep up what you’re doing’.

“That was very nice of him.”

Salah always sensed there was something a little special, just bubbling beneath the surface.

And three years on, with Robinson now firmly established as if not the best in his position then one of the best, Salah may just be the happiest man in town if Liverpool strike a deal with Fulham and release their talisman from under the American’s lock and key.

When asked to pick the wingers he has had the most difficulty with, meanwhile, it felt telling that Robinson chose not Salah but Aston Villa’s Leon Bailey.

“I would say Leon Bailey’s up there,” Robinson said. “He’s very hard to play against. He’s direct, he’s a threat. He can take it on both sides so that’s tough.

“I feel like most people expect you to say Salah or [Arsenal’s Bukayo] Saka. But, while I’ve been in the Prem, most of the time I’ve played well against them.”

Robinson was ‘unbelievable’ as Fulham drew with Liverpool

While Robinson is renowned most for his searing pace and his much-improved delivery from out wide – only Newcastle’s Jacob Murphy and Salah himself have more than his 10 league assists – a man who left Everton in 2019 without a single senior appearance is also a very solid, one-v-one defender.

He sits fourth in the table for interceptions. Robinson made no fewer than 13, meanwhile, during a thrilling 4-3 defeat by Liverpool a year-and-a-half ago. Another afternoon in which Salah failed to write his name onto the scoresheet.

“What a performance,” Fulham boss Marco Silva said after the latest stand-out Robinson display against the champions-elect, a 2-2 draw in December in which the rampaging left-back set up both of the Cottagers’ goals.

“Not easy to come here playing against a player like Salah. We took that risk, to go one-v-one, many times. He was so brave, he was so assertive, he was so aggressive in the right way and he did it so, so well.

“He’s improving so, so quickly in some things. The way he’s improving in some set-ups, defensive set-ups, being much more brave in the way he faces one-v-one situations, the way he goes inside the spaces as well…

“And of course, two assists from a full-back at Anfield shows the quality that he has. What a performance from him. What a performance. Brilliant, unbelievable performance from him, and I told him at the end of the game that he has to be really proud.”

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