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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
Sport
Ian Doyle

Mohamed Salah sent Liverpool penalty message as Jurgen Klopp 'unhappiness' explained

Few people doubt Mohamed Salah will walk straight back into the Liverpool team on his return from the Africa Cup of Nations.

What isn't quite so clear, though, is whether the Egyptian resumes his position as the Reds' penalty taker.

Salah has been first choice on spot kicks for much of his Anfield career and at one point was successful on 17 consecutive occasions.

However, the forward had missed two of his last four - against AC Milan and Leicester City this season - before departing for AFCON duty with Egypt earlier this month.

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In Salah's absence, Fabinho - who was the regular taker at previous club Monaco - has assumed the role with James Milner, the usual deputy on penalties, no longer a regular in the side.

The Brazilian followed his spot kick in the FA Cup win over Shrewsbury Town a fortnight ago with another at Crystal Palace on Sunday that secured a 3-1 Premier League win.

And Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain believes Fabinho is threatening to shake up the established order of penalty takers in the Liverpool squad.

"He works on them a lot and he’s good at them," he said. "Millie was stood on the sideline as well, probably eyeing it up ready to come on!

"But Fab did really well there. He’s scored a few now and he seems to have moved into that penalty spot.

"It will be interesting to see when Mo comes back if he’s still got that number two spot on pens!

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"We’ll see. It was good, though, and we needed that from him."

Oxlade-Chamberlain - who recovered from the ankle problem that forced him to miss Thursday's Carabao Cup semi-final second leg at Arsenal - has impressed when deputising for Salah on the right wing in the last two Premier League games, scoring against Brentford last week and notching the second at Palace.

“I’m obviously filling in down that right side while Mo’s away; it’s quite big shoes to fill there in terms of goals and providing that threat in behind," he said.

“But that’s what I tried to do and I managed to do it last week with a goal, and I was glad to back that up again with another goal.

“Ultimately I think it helped us, it gave us that little buffer for that little dip we had. But it’s more to do with the performance and the stuff I could do off the ball as well."

Liverpool had gone ahead at Selhurst Park through Virgil van Dijk but had to withstand a second-half barrage from Palace after Odsonne Edouard pulled a goal back.

And Oxlade-Chamberlain admits Jurgen Klopp was already unhappy with the manner in which his players had finished the first half.

"We started really well, the first 35 minutes we were playing some nice stuff," said the 28-year-old to liverpoolfc.com.

"I think we then took our foot off the gas a little bit and maybe started forcing things rather than playing the simple passes. Then we made some sloppy mistakes which gave them some big chances that Ali had to save us from.

"That obviously gives them a bit more confidence and I think they came back into the game a bit.

"The manager wasn’t happy at half-time with that and we went out there second half just knowing we needed to be a bit more dogged.

"It wasn’t pretty second half, but obviously in the end it was good enough and sometimes you have to win like that."

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