Mohamed Salah, our super talented Egyptian winger and our only genuine star abroad, is having some difficulties at Chelsea at the moment and may very well be on the move in the next transfer window in January. This may seem nonsense to some people as Salah moved to Chelsea less than a year ago but he's finding playing time very hard to come by at his club right now and it seems that Jose Mourinho is not happy even with Salah's brief cameos this season. Chelsea faced league two side Shrewsbury Town a week ago in a cup game and Salah got a rare place in the starting eleven, a chance to prove to Mourinho he was wrong to leave him out of the side in every Premier League and Champions League game so far this season. However, things did not go according to the script for Salah as he had a below average game and could not really make his presence felt even though he set up the first goal for Drogba with a fine first time pass that allowed the evergreen Ivorian to dispatch the ball in the back of the net to score the first goal of the game. Shrewsbury levelled the score later before an own goal earned Chelsea a place in the quarter-finals but did not really earn Salah another spot in the starting eleven after that game. Mourinho blasted his team after the game and criticised the performances of Salah and Schurrle in particular, saying that both of them “disappointed him”. Salah's performance wasn't that bad by any means but was not a performance that could help his case against the likes of Willian and Schurrle, let alone stars of the team Hazard and Oscar. The main problem that has faced Salah this season is that in all cases he needs extremely massive performances when given the chance so as to make it impossible for Mourinho to ignore him and instead put a World Cup winner or a Brazilian international who was signed for 30 million English pounds on the bench. Money plays a huge role in football these days and Salah's case is no different. Willian was signed by Mourinho from under the noses of Tottenham and Liverpool and there is no doubt that the Brazilian international is a very good player but he's not a Hazard and he's not an Oscar. Willian does not score or set up many goals and he's so inconsistent since he signed for Chelsea but given his huge fee he'll always be given starts and he'll always be seeing more playing time than Salah who signed for only 11 million English pounds. We're not saying that Salah has done enough to be playing week in week out if he's competing with the Brazilian who probably deserves to see more playing time than Salah. But the difference between the two is not as big as the difference of playing time each one gets. On the other hand, even though Mourinho criticised Schurrle's performance against Shrewsbury as he did with Salah, the German star won't be worried big time as he knows he'll be playing against QPR a few days later anyway given his established star reputation at the club. Egyptian fans will not argue much that a World Cup winner deserves to be playing week in week out for Chelsea even if his performances are not that impressive lately as he's already earned himself good credit with Mourinho and the Blues' fans especially when his best games this year came against big rivals Arsenal and Man City. Salah needs a miracle this season to save his Chelsea career, maybe a miracle in the coming two months if he wants to be at Chelsea next season or beyond January. Against Shrewsbury it was obvious that Salah is playing with absolutely no confidence at all and it showed in some of his shots which saw Drogba consoling him after one of his shots comically went for a throw-in. Salah knows that he'll get a few chances every now and then to show what he can do and the pressure of the need to perform in these games is affecting his performances. Mourinho isn't helping by criticising the player in public. Salah's main rivals this season are money and reputation so what he needs to do now is to fully focus on performing well if he's given any chance in the near future. Let's hope he can prove to Mourinho that he has what it takes to play for Chelsea. If our Egyptian star fails to shine from now until January there will be a very big chance he will move to another club on loan till the end of the season. There are reports already that Everton and Basiktas are keen to sign the Egyptian. The next two months will be vital for Salah. The writer is a freelance journalist.
