After his performance against Shrewsbury the other night and subsequent quotes from Jose Mourinho after the game, we are all wondering if Mohamed Salah has a future at Chelsea.
The whole situation in my view for Salah at the moment is that it's very sad and does not seem to work out for him. If you step back to a few weeks after he was signed, everything looked very, very promising but as the other players in his position have stepped up their game, he seems to have done the opposite.
Looking frustrated with little confidence, Salah is suffering at the moment and the manager's comment about him wouldn't have helped either!
In a quote taken from here, Mourinho said:"I expect players to give me problems. I love problems. But a lot of them didn't and they've made it easy to choose my team for Saturday. If players who played 90 minutes two days ago were fantastic I expect people who are not playing a lot to raise the level to create me problems. They didn't create me big problems.”
When asked if Schurrle and Salah in particular had disappointed him, Mourinho said: "Yes."
It doesn't bode well for Salah's immediate future does it! As a result, I am wondering if we are going to find ourselves in a similar situation to that of Juan Mata and Kevin De Bruyne in the next few weeks?
I do not know Salah personally so judge him as we all do by watching him on the pitch and am looking for signs from his body language as an indication of his confidence. For example, you look at the likes of Oscar, Willian and Eden Hazard and they all look confident in their game.
Looking at Salah, it became clear in that first half that this is a man who is down on confidence and his luck and probably feels the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Having hardly featured this season, he continues to train hard and hope that he impresses the boss. However, at the same time, we have players who ARE in the team and have all contributed to our unbeaten start so far and, therefore, forcing their selection week in, week out.
You only have to look at how many times Salah tried to make something happen, to shoot towards goal to see that he feels that he has to do something to stand out and to become part of the managers plans.
Unfortunately for him, it never happened despite a few good moments in the build up to our attacks. His touch to set up Drogba's goal was exquisite for example.
The problem for Salah is that everyone will remember his shot after cutting inside from the right that caught him off balance, sliced wide left and out for a throw-in! The fact that he spent the next five minutes shaking his arm about (which he had landed on) to try and ignore the jeers he was receiving from the home support, spoke volumes.
Salah’s brilliant goal against Shewsbury
If we think about his qualities and the Salah we had become used to seeing playing against us for Basel, you have to admit that he looks a totally different player back then. He has lightening pace which always caused us problems and I honestly believed that he would become a success here in England and the Premier League.
I look at the United game last Sunday and believe that the game was the perfect opportunity to throw him into the mix in the second half after we had scored to give us a different option. Look at Luke Shaw for example, to me he isn't the quickest and Chelsea would of had an option to put Salah one on one against him every time we looked to push forward or even over the other side against Rafael.
I personally believe his pace, and that's pure pace is such an important attribute to keep hold of and with a run of games and good performances, he could play much more of a role at Chelsea than he does now.
So, after all this, the questions I am asking YOU the Chelsea supporter reading this blog post are: "Do you think he has a future at Chelsea and do you not think there have been moments where he could have been utilised such as United?