“Someone doesn’t want me at the club,” Salah said as part of the post-match comments that turned an already turbulent moment at the club into a full-blown storm.
“It seems like the club is throwing me under the bus, that’s how I feel. I think it’s very clear that someone wants me to take all the blame.”
Salah refers to ‘someone’ a few times. We don’t know whether he himself knows who this is, but given the sporting structure and hierarchy at Liverpool, there are more people who could be this, more people who make decisions at the club that influence players than just Arne Slot.
The mysterious entity in this scenario could be the sporting management team, which currently consists of Richard Hughes at club level and above him at FSG level Michael Edwards, who must take some of the blame for the way this has played out.
They are mysterious because we don’t hear much about these figures, despite their seniority and the impact their decisions have on the club.
We do not know their plans for the club’s long-term progression and evolution after Jurgen Klopp, neither with Salah in the team nor for a future without Salah. A future that looks like it could come sooner than originally planned when he was signed to a two-year contract in April.
The planning ahead of this season is partly responsible for the mess Liverpool find themselves in both on and off the pitch.
With all such issues there is always the caveat that the tragic death of Diogo Jota has massively affected the team in more ways than we will know, and will affect individuals, including Salah, in different ways.
The planner’s dream goes wrong
When Liverpool embarked on an unprecedented spending spree this summer, it felt like they had left themselves behind too much to do in one transfer windowwhich is the fault of long term planning.
They made it even bigger for themselves by selling Luis Diaz, Darwin Nunez, Kostas Tsimikas, Caoimhin Kelleher and Jarell Quansah, all of whom played more than 1,000 minutes for the club last season. This is on top of the departure of Trent Alexander-Arnold.
Regardless of the views of these players before and after the sale, they all contributed to last season’s success, whether that was in the league itself or acting as an alternative to rest players in other leagues.
Even a player like Harvey Elliott played a role, with 28 appearances, providing relief for other players at the end of games.
That is eight players who are no longer at the club and had to be replaced, in addition to the natural reinforcements needed after a season in which the club did not integrate any new players into the first team.
Even after the signings of Jeremy Frimpong, Florian Wirtz, Milos Kerkez, Hugo Ekitike, Alexander Isak and Giovanni Leoni, it still felt like Liverpool were short of a defender.
The pursuit of Marc Guehi was an admission of this, although the club were unlucky with the injury of the impressive-looking Leoni.
The effect on Mo Salah
This overhaul changed the dynamics of the team, and a change in the system affected everyone, especially Salah.
Elliott’s loan left Salah as the only left-footed striker in the team, and there aren’t even any left-footed midfielders or centre-backs who can add such balance.
The sale of Diaz left Cody Gakpo as the only remaining forward in the squad that Slot trusts, and exhausted the options in the middle.
It was quite clear last season that he didn’t fully trust Chiesa to fill these roles, and this season it’s even clearer when the Italian seems like an obvious choice to come in but still doesn’t.
Some of this, you might even say much of it, is on Lock.
He can be criticized for not even trying Chiesa in place of Gakpo or Salah, but the truth is that it is still far from ideal to have a player who made just one Premier League start last season, after the title had already been won, as your only senior back winger.
One of Liverpool’s first problems is that they appear to have promised one of their new signings, Wirtz, a specific position in the team as a number 10 in a 4-2-3-1.
This is unusual and perhaps misleading, as it wasn’t even the kind of number 10 role he played in Leverkusen. There he was a left-sided 10 in a 3-4-2-1 in the Bundesliga, which is very different from a central 10 in a 4-2-3-1 (an untested 4-2-3-1 from Liverpool) in the Premier League.
It changes the dynamics of the forward and midfield, and changes what you expect from each player.
This has had a knock-on effect on the entire team and has led to most roles from the title-winning 2024/25 season being slightly changed, including what is expected of Salah.
A player like Salah cannot be relaxed
The problems with Salah, both his decline in form and his subsequent reaction to being dropped because of that poor form, are partly sporting issues.
Salah is not the kind of player for whom a succession plan can be put in place while he is still in the squad.
You don’t need to build a squad around him, but it does make sense to accommodate a player who scored 29 goals and 18 assists in the league last season, and reached double figures for goals and assists in six of his eight seasons at the club, and reduce the disruption around him as much as possible.
However, we will not hear anything from the sports directors about this. Maybe we should do that too.
After all, Slot’s role is described by the club as ‘head coach’ and not as ‘manager’. It is therefore not unreasonable that we, and perhaps even for Slot himself, occasionally expect some help, commentary and explanation from those who work at that level.
Salah’s comments were the trigger. Slot has been asked about it in every interview since, with numerous players having to approach the issue during their pre- and post-match Champions League media duties this week.
However, ‘the club’ has kept quiet on the matter, and although Slot and the players face each other publicly every week, it can also be good to hear from someone above them every now and then.
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