Jürgen Klopp just found what he wanted in Liverpool midfield and Mohamed Salah moments prove it

This is truer still when you consider he was playing in a position other than the one in which he is expected to play. Equally, it offered up the tantalizing prospect of fielding a defensive midfielder with his playmaking skills.

Luis Díaz’s goal offered ample evidence of that. The assist pass from Mohamed Salah was a perfectly weighted, threading-the-eye-of-the-needle delivery but the ball into the Egyptian from Mac Allister was equally wonderful.

More notably, it was the sort of pass so rarely seen from a holding midfielder at Liverpool. This is not to say the previous incumbents were incapable of such moments, of course. We can recall wonderful assists from Jordan Henderson to Salah — when they’re at Goodison Park and Old Trafford, they tend to be memorable — while Fabinho assisted the Reds’ number 11 on four occasions during their time together.

But the numbers speak for themselves. FBRef carries a metric called Goal Creating Actions, which awards credit to the two actions (passes, take-ons, shots, fouls suffered or defensive actions) directly preceding a goal. Fabinho averaged a shade under six per season in the Premier League, with Henderson slightly below seven over the six campaigns for which the data is available. Mac Allister, by contrast, recorded eight last term and is already off the mark for 2023/24.

The Argentine linked up well with Salah throughout the match at Chelsea and almost played him through on goal but for a smart defensive intervention. As well as for the pre-assist, Mac Allister made two other gorgeous long passes to Liverpool’s right-forward, and his total of six to Salah was only one shy of his most frequent pass combination (which was with Ibrahima Konaté and Andy Robertson).

The former Brighton man was also responsible for two of the Reds’ three switch passes (those which travel more than 40 yards across the width of the pitch). Liverpool topped the Premier League for this brand of pass last season and rely on them to help spread the play, so we can expect to see Mac Allister delivering plenty more switches over the next few years.

The World Cup winner showed his dribbling prowess too, if not in a showy or flashy manner. Mac Allister completed 13 carries of at least five meters when none of his teammates recorded more than nine, progressing the ball toward goal a total of 102 yards (roughly a sixth of the team’s total).