Liverpool's Succession Plan for Mohamed Salah: Ibrahim Mbaye
Mohamed Salah walked away from Anfield this summer and left behind more than a mountain of goals. He left a void on the right that defines how Liverpool attack, how they counter, how they terrify teams.
The clock has been ticking ever since.
You’d expect a club of Liverpool’s size to move quickly, to unveil a ready-made heir before pre-season truly bit. Yet with less than three weeks until the new campaign kicks off, that right flank remains conspicuously bare. No specialist signing. No obvious starter. Just a nagging question.
And now, perhaps, the first real answer.
A Right Wing Without a Ruler
Liverpool’s depth chart out wide already looked thin before Salah’s departure. Now it looks stretched to breaking point.
Jeremie Frimpong offers pace and attacking thrust, but he isn’t a natural winger and, with Conor Bradley injured, he’s needed at right-back rather than hugging the touchline higher up. The interest in Bradley Barcola has turned heads, yet he operates on the opposite flank, cutting in from the left, not patrolling the right where Salah made his empire.
So who starts there on opening day? Right now, no one can say with conviction. The structure of the side, so often shaped around Salah’s gravity, suddenly feels lopsided.
But Liverpool’s gaze, it seems, is fixed not just on the next three weeks, but on the next three to five years.
Ibrahim Mbaye: A Long-Term Bet on Stardom
On Tuesday evening, reports emerged that Liverpool want Ibrahim Mbaye and that talks are expected to begin soon. Fabrice Hawkins has detailed genuine interest from the club, while Fabrizio Romano has indicated that the 18-year-old is keen on the move.
This is not a short-term patch. This is a succession plan.
Mbaye, a Senegalese talent of rare promise, is being lined up as the man to eventually take on Salah’s mantle. At 18, he is not the finished product and no one at Anfield will pretend otherwise. He is not walking into the dressing room as a like-for-like replacement who instantly guarantees 20 league goals.
What he does bring is something harder to find than numbers: the raw materials of a potential world-beater.
Liverpool know the market on the right is dire. Proven, elite right-wingers are either unavailable, unaffordable, or simply not good enough to shape a team around. In that landscape, Mbaye stands out as the kind of high-ceiling talent you move quickly for, before someone else does.
The Salah Question
Replacing Salah is not just about goals or assists. It is about fear. Defenders backing off. Full-backs pinned. Midfields dragged out of shape.
Liverpool are under no illusion that an 18-year-old can walk in and instantly recreate that. Yet the club also understands that waiting for a perfect, ready-made Salah clone is a fantasy. The modern market doesn’t work like that, especially on the right.
So they are looking at potential, not perfection.
Mbaye fits that profile. The belief around him is that, given time and the right environment, he can grow into a player worthy of being spoken about in the same breath as Salah’s Anfield legacy. Not identical, but influential in his own way.
For Liverpool, this may be as close as the current market allows to a true succession plan: identify a special talent early, bring him in, and let him grow into the role rather than throwing him straight into the fire.
The club has seen what happens when it gets these calls right. Now the question is simple: will Ibrahim Mbaye be the next great Anfield winger, or just another name in the long shadow of Mohamed Salah?
