Mohamed Salah faces real rivalry for Liverpool role as new pecking order emerges
When referee Anthony Taylor pointed to the spot after Dominik Szoboszlai was hauled to the ground, there was no doubt to whom the responsibility would be passed.
Darwin Nunez may have notched a penalty a few weeks earlier at LASK, but that the Uruguayan stood inside the area holding the ball was to merely ensure the stage was properly set for Mohamed Salah to step up from 12 yards.
Sure enough, the Egyptian tucked away from the spot to help Liverpool ultimately earn a 2-2 draw at Brighton in their last outing ahead of the recent international break.
It was the third penalty the Reds had been awarded in the top flight this season, already only one fewer than they were given during the entirety of the previous campaign.
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And it allowed Salah to improve his impressive conversion rate from the spot to 82.35%, having scored 28 of his 34 penalties. For some context, only 11 Liverpool players can boast a better ratio of which only two - Jan Molby and Steven Gerrard - have taken more spot kicks than Salah. Phil Neal, who was the Reds' chief penalty taker for part of the late 1970s and early 1980s, scored 38 of 51 penalties.
Salah has retained the trust both in himself and that of Klopp despite having missed three of his previous five penalties before scoring against West Ham United last month, which included failures in successive Premier League games against Bournemouth and Arsenal towards the end of last season.
“We had a conversation and he (Mo) wanted to stay the penalty-taker," said Klopp at the time. "We had a normal conversation about it and I said ‘Okay, you are’. You don’t
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