Liverpool’s Current Situation: A Deeper Look Beyond Mohamed Salah vs. Arne Slot
Take a step back, and it’s pretty remarkable that the current situation at Liverpool is being framed in the simplest terms: Mohamed Salah vs. Arne Slot. And I don’t just mean that in terms of who’s right and reasonable, but even in terms of who should take the first step, with Slot saying Tuesday night that “I haven’t said I’m not going to talk to him. And the next question is should the initiative come from me or from him…”
It feels downright puerile, something straight out of the schoolyard, with fans and media playing the role of parents. Slot as the mean teacher who blames little Mo for his student’s poor test scores and kicks him out of class, leaving his student no choice but to air his grievances to his parents. Or, alternatively, Salah as the spoiled brat, unwilling to be accountable for his own disruption to the class, crying to his parents and hoping they’ll get that nasty Mr. Slot fired — or, at least, disciplined. And so, you wait and see who takes the first step towards the proverbial “clear the air talks,” which you hope ends with “hug it out” vibes.
Except there’s somebody missing from this narrative. Someone who gets paid to make the big decisions, someone whose big decisions led — however indirectly and in good faith — to the current impasse, someone who Salah was presumably referencing in his rant and, most importantly, someone who will ultimately decide how this gets resolved.
And that’s the club itself. More specifically, since this is by definition a soccer issue, Michael Edwards, whose title literally is CEO of Football and Richard Hughes, the sporting director.
Other than brief stories saying they were backing Slot — as you’d expect — there hasn’t been a peep out of them. That would be weird in some soccer cultures, but in England, for better or worse, it’s fine: You never really hear from folks in their roles. (Though maybe we should.)
Yet on a broader level, they have to be accountable that it has come to this, just as Slot and Salah are.
Salah didn’t say the “manager” threw him under the bus; he said the “club” did. He didn’t say the “manager” promised him a lot over the summer; he said it was the “club,” and that it’s the “club” that “haven’t kept those promises.” Salah also said his relationship with Slot used to be “good,” but that now they “don’t have any relationship” and he doesn’t know why. But then he adds that “someone does not want me in the club.”
Understanding the Promises Made
Could it be that he’s talking about Slot throughout and just using the word “club” for convenience? I guess, though, that would be a little weird. File it under “known unknowns.”
The more interesting point is his reference to “promises made over the summer.”
I think we can safely rule out that the “promise” wasn’t “Mo, you’ve done so much for the club, don’t worry about Hugo Ekitike and Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak and whomever else…. You’re a club legend; you’re going to start every single game.” We can rule it out because no manager (or club) would make that promise, and even if they did, no player would be foolish enough to take it at face value.
Especially not when Salah himself came within less than 100 days of free agency, only signing his two-year contract extension on April 11, 2025, less than eight months ago. That sent a very clear message from the club: We love you, we appreciate you and we want you to stay, but it’s going to be on our terms because you’re not indispensable, you’re not bigger than the club and we can imagine a future without you.
More likely, the “promise” (or perhaps it’s better to speak of “plan”) was that Salah would fit into a 4-2-3-1 system with new fullbacks, Wirtz at the No.10 and a new center forward, and that said system would work and deliver results. Well, as you probably know, it hasn’t. Slot has had to fiddle and tweak his lineups time and again, experimenting with different setups and personnel — the most recent was the diamond midfield and two-forward set without Salah (and, initially, without Wirtz, too) we saw in Liverpool’s 1-0 Champions League win at Inter on Tuesday night.
Who Was Responsible for the Plan?
Who was responsible for the plan/promise and the signings? Well, it was 100% not Slot on his own: It was Edwards and Hughes in conjunction with Slot and, presumably, others. And they were the ones who made the big call on extending Salah (and club captain Virgil van Dijk) in the spring, too.
These are bright people with a solid track record; these aren’t fools collecting real-life Panini stickers of players. They saw a pathway and, presumably, so did Slot. They thought the manager could make it work on the pitch. And they thought that while there might be some pain points along the way — competition for places, starting with center forward after the arrival of Ekitike and Isak, some players perhaps unhappy with their minutes on the pitch, some egos might be bruised — they would have the emotional intelligence and man-management skills to navigate through it.
But even smart folks get it wrong sometimes. Recruitment and squad management isn’t an exact science. (Exhibit A is at the back, where they failed to bring in the central defender they wanted after Marc Guéhi’s deadline day will he, won’t he debacle at Crystal Palace and were unable to execute their contingency plan, assuming they had one. In fact, if Guéhi had come in, it’s fair to wonder whether it wouldn’t be Van Dijk or Ibrahima Konaté getting benched instead.)
Accountability and Collective Responsibility
That’s where the misjudgment lies and where, you might imagine, the club’s owners and upper management will hold them to account. Liverpool struggling so much was a remote possibility. Salah being benched was a remote possibility within that remote possibility. And Salah’s outburst was an even more remote possibility with the aforementioned remote possibilities. But it happened — all of it did — and now they need to deal with it.
What we don’t know is the degree to which everyone was on board with the plan, to what level they were confident it would work, and to what level they believed in their ability to deal with the worst-case scenario (which is pretty much this one). We don’t know, but there are folks at Liverpool who do know. And they will be drawing conclusions.
What you can’t do is dump everything on Slot, either as a hero for the club or, if you’re in the Salah camp, the pantomime villain. The days of the Sir Alex Ferguson-esque omnipotent, omniscient manager are long gone. But so too are the days — Liverpool fans will remember them — when the manager (Brendan Rodgers at the time) and the so-called transfer committee seemed to be operating independently of each other.
