Salah's Goal Cannot Mask Liverpool's Pathetic Collapse Against Bottom-Placed Wolves

Liverpool's Champions League hopes took another battering on Tuesday night as they crashed to a 2-1 defeat against Wolves at Molineux—a result that will sting all the more given their opponents sit rock-bottom of the Premier League table.

It was a ninth league loss of the 2025/26 campaign for the Reds, and it followed a painfully familiar script: sloppy defending, wasteful attacking, and a result that should never have been in doubt. Andre's deflected strike proved decisive after Salah had cancelled out Rodrigo Gomes' opening goal, but Liverpool's inability to finish the job against the league's poorest side speaks volumes about their season-long malaise.

Salah did find the back of the net, latching onto Bellegarde's misplaced pass with a neat outside-of-the-boot finish. Yet the goal masked a thoroughly anonymous display from the Egyptian, who flattered to deceive across the 90 minutes. GOAL's 5/10 rating told its own story, noting that while Salah "pounced on Bellegarde's poor pass," he was "once again poor for almost the entire match and butchered one glorious breakaway shortly after scoring." The verdict added that Sa probably should have saved the effort anyway.

Former Liverpool stalwart Steve Nicol was equally unimpressed. Speaking to ESPN, he suggested Salah's involvement was little more than a cameo, and a fortunate one at that. "Although Mo Salah scored a goal, the goalie should have saved it and he really didn't contribute anything again all evening," Nicol remarked.

The broader picture, however, painted an even grimmer portrait. Pundit Stephen Warnock pinpointed Curtis Jones as the architect of Liverpool's downfall, with the midfielder's careless possession loss in his own half proving catastrophic. "It was a mistake from Curtis Jones," Warnock explained. "He plays a ball into Alisson and Alisson's never going to get any purchase on it. It puts the keeper in a terrible position."

What followed was Andre's late effort, which took a wicked deflection to loop over Alisson and seal Wolves' unlikely victory.

Nicol, however, reserved his harshest criticism for the collective performance and what it says about Liverpool's fundamental problems this season. "Dominating the ball and doing something with it and creating chances and scoring goals are two different things," he told ESPN. "The final pass, the final decision was horrible. When you're defending champions and trying to get in the Champions League, going forward, dominating the play away from home isn't enough."

He pressed the point: "You have to take the other step and create chances and score goals against the team at the bottom of the league and going down. It's not acceptable to lose to Wolves."

The numbers underlined the absurdity of the defeat. Wolves mustered just two shots on goal and converted both. Liverpool's inability to punish such profligacy from their visitors was damning.

For Nicol, Tuesday's capitulation epitomised Liverpool's entire season. "I can sit here for 10 minutes and say everything that has gone wrong but [Tuesday] was a microcosm of what's gone wrong all season; poor decision-making, the front three done not much at all and defensively, you concede two goals from two shots," he reflected.

His most damning assessment, though, concerned the unpredictability that has become Liverpool's calling card. "My biggest concern is that it doesn't matter who Liverpool play against… they can lose," Nicol warned. "When you're team is stepping on a field regardless of the situation and you're not sure what you're going to get, that's not acceptable at a club like Liverpool. Everybody who plays against Liverpool know they're going to get a shot and probably going to score."