Liverpool's £30m target could be the man to fill Mohamed Salah's boots - but he's a big gamble

Liverpool are clearly in the midst of some serious succession planning right now – with the likelihood of Mohamed Salah being tempted away to Saudi Arabia seemingly not diminishing, the rumour mill is going into overdrive as Jürgen Klopp and his scouting team scramble to find possible replacements. And while the recent reports that Liverpool are sincerely hoping to bring Kylian Mbappé in will grab the biggest headlines, they’re clearly not confident enough to go without a Plan B. Borussia Dortmund’s Donyell Malen may well be the back-up.

There have been rumours that Klopp was keen on the Dutch international before, but TeamTalk reported yesterday that Liverpool’s interest has been renewed, with Malen – a versatile winger who can play on either flank – very much on the list of players who could fill the gaping void that would be left should Salah leave. But is Malen up to the task of filling some of the biggest boots in Premier League history?

The 25-year-old has a pretty formidable scoring record over his time at Dortmund and at PSV Eindhoven, where he hit double figures for three seasons on the trot before moving to Germany in a €30m (£25.9m) deal which effectively made him the replacement for Jadon Sancho – but he can’t quite hold a candle to Salah’s astonishing output.

Few can, of course, but Malen is still no slouch in front of goal, with 18 Bundesliga goals in 65 appearances so far. That’s a very solid return for a wide forward – especially with 17 assists added on top – but it isn’t in Salah’s league. Malen can offer a great deal, but it would be a stretch to see him as a like-for-like replacement. If Liverpool do sign him, the focus on goal-scoring would likely have to be pushed onto the central striker, rather than on the wide forwards.

But it may be that the raw numbers from his three seasons at Germany do him a slight disservice. Malen hit some astonishing form towards the tail end of the last campaign, hitting eight goals in Dortmund’s last ten league games including a run of five consecutive games in which he founds the back of the net – and he started this year of at a similar pace, with four goals in his first five games before things quietened down a little.

The question is whether that remarkable scoring run represents a sustainable peak from a player who is coming into his prime, or whether it was a flash in the pan. Malen has scored just once in the following 13 games, which lends credence to the latter suggestion, but that doesn’t mean he can’t play at his very best for extended periods. If Liverpool signed the version of Malen that scored all of those goals, they would be getting a player who could offer a pretty high percentage of Salah’s output. If it was just a one-off streak of sublime form which isn’t going to be repeated… well, let’s just hope they can get Mbappé.

Not that Malen isn’t a fine player with more to him that goal-scoring hot streaks – for starters, he’s a superb dribbler which excellent technique and the capacity to beat players on both sides of the ball and who can generate a ton of yardage from his high-speed runs down the flanks or into the box. He’s comfortable going inside and outside, which makes him a real headache for defenders, as he can just as easily go one way as the other – and he’s always looking for runs into the box off the ball as well, offering plenty of options for final balls. His xG output of 0.56 per game over the past two seasons, meanwhile, is actually fractionally higher than Salah’s – even if he isn’t quite as consistent when it comes to putting his chances away.

Malen, then, is a quality winger with a lot of tricks up his sleeve who has the potential to bag a bunch of goals if he can find his best form and maintain it, but his ups and downs so far suggest that keeping his highest level up is not guaranteed. The question, then, will be whether he’s worth the risk, and without a hard number to go by, that’s hard to gauge – Transfermarkt reckon he’s worth around €35m (£30.2m) but given that his contract runs until 2026 and that would only represent a very small profit for a team which thrives on buying low and selling high, that feels very much on the low end.

Some of the speculation that Malen could be on the move has been created by the fact that he recently switched agents, to the same company that negotiated Cody Gakpo’s move to Anfield – and players typically change representatives only when they’re keen to make a move happen. So it seems likely that the player would be keen, at the very least.

Should Liverpool go in for Malen? Well, not if they could get their hands on Mbappé, granted. But in the more likely eventuality that they can’t persuade one of the biggest superstars in the global game to come to the North West, then he’d be a decent bet, albeit not the safest. You’d expect that if Salah did leave, Malen wouldn’t be the only player brought into to fill that role – but if the same Malen that kept Dortmund in the hunt for the Bundesliga title as all else collapsed around him is the same player that arrives at Anfield, then Klopp will have quite the player on his hands. If only that was guaranteed…