Liverpool's horrible season got worse on two different fronts on Saturday. The day started with the Reds coughing up a 2-0 lead against relegation battler Leeds United, ultimately drawing 3–3 with yet another fragile performance. It ended with club icon Mo Salah absolutely torching his manager during an impromptu postgame press conference.
Salah has been on Liverpool's bench for the last three games, only earning a 45-minute cameo during a 1–1 draw against Sunderland. Standing in front of a gaggle of reporters, Salah said that he's been made a scapegoat by the club, that he no longer has a relationship with manager Arne Slot, and that his time at Liverpool may well be coming to an end this winter.
On the scapegoating:
It seems like the club has thrown me under the bus. That is how I am feeling. I think it is very clear that someone wanted me to get all of the blame. The club made me a lot of promises in the summer and so far I am in the bench for three games, so I can’t say they keep the promise.
On his relationship with Slot:
I said many times before that I had a good relationship with the manager, and all of a sudden, we don’t have any relationship. I don’t know why, but it seems to me, how I see it, that someone doesn’t want me in the club.
On his future:
I called my mum yesterday—you guys [the media] didn’t know if I would start or not, but I knew. Yesterday I said to them, come to the Brighton game [on Saturday]. It doesn’t matter if I am going to play or not, but I am going to enjoy it. We’ll see what’s going to happen. But in my head, I’m going to enjoy that game, if I play or not, because I don’t know what is going to happen now. I will be in Anfield to say goodbye to the fans and go to the Africa Cup [AFCON]. I don’t know what is going to happen when I am there.
Salah's beef is based on the fact that he's been benched for the last three games, which is not a shocking turn of events in the context of his performances this season, but apparently runs counter to promises that were made to him when he signed a new contract with the club this summer. There's no arguing against the fact that Salah has played far below his sky-high standards this season, and that Liverpool has been worse when he's on the field. It is not all that surprising to see a 33-year-old forward's production start to dip in his 14th season as a professional, but Salah's fall has been much steeper than expected given that he spent all of last season as one of the most lethal forwards in the league, tallying 29 goals and 18 assists in 38 league games.
The question of whether Salah deserves to be benched is almost beside the point, though. This kind of thing happens all the time at big clubs, especially ones that aggressively re-arm themselves in the transfer market every summer. Superstars and club heroes find themselves crowded into a dressing room with younger versions of themselves, and it is up to the manager and club hierarchy to deftly handle the transition from one generation of players to the next. For as beloved as Salah is by the fans, and for as good as he was last year, there was no way the summer arrivals of Alexander Isak, Hugo Etikete, and Florian Wirtz weren't going to threaten a 33-year-old's ironclad grip on his position.
But Salah getting rotated in and out of the lineup while Liverpool is winning games and competing for a title would land a lot differently than when the same thing starts happening while the club is sliding down the table. Slot has reached the point where he is managing for his job every game, and there are only so many things he can do to demonstrate how hard he's working to get things turned around. Benching Salah is perhaps the easiest way to message to his bosses that he's taking this seriously.
What all the losing has done, however, is reveal an organizational failure. It's clear that the club just never considered that a season like this was possible, which means they never stopped to ask themselves questions like, Do we really need to spend a small country's GDP on a new set of attackers? or, Should we definitely give Salah a huge new contract and make him promises about his place in the team? Allocating all of that transfer money towards attackers instead of defenders is one of the reasons Liverpool is in this mess, and from there the failures just compound: Slot sacrifices Salah because he has an embarrassment of attackers to choose from, the team keeps playing like shit because the defense still sucks, and Salah ends up feeling burned.
Bad results can only excuse Slot's actions so much, though. Salah is a legend who has done as much for Liverpool as any player could ever be asked, and if certain promises are made to a player like that, he's well within his rights to want those promises kept, even when his performance dips and the results start going south. That's the real crux of Salah's complaint, the fact that the club isn't sticking up for him:
It is not acceptable for me. I don’t know why this is happening always to me. I don’t get it. I think if this was somewhere else, every club would protect its player.
[...]
I am the only one in this situation. Can I give an example? It’s silly, but I am sorry. I remember a while ago, Harry Kane was not scoring for 10 games, everyone in the media was like, "Oh, Harry will score for sure," when it comes to Mo, everyone is like, "He needs to be on the bench." I am sorry, Harry!
Winning the title is of course the primary goal for a team of Liverpool's stature, but there are things other than trophies that a club can owe to its fans and players. One of those things is a proper sendoff for a long-serving superstar who has become an icon in the city, and if making that happen requires dropping a few more points in an already lost season, is that the worst thing in the world?
Ironically, Slot's desperate attempt to keep his job might be his ultimate undoing. By going public in such a bombastic way, Salah has now forced the club's hierarchy into a position where they have to choose between Slot and Salah. Even if Slot is fired tomorrow, though, there's no assurance that the rift between the club and Salah can be mended. All of this may end up with the worst possible conclusion: Slot loses his job, Liverpool keeps losing, and Salah jets off to Saudi Arabia in January anyway. What a mess.
