Arne Slot has made clear he is untroubled by suggestions he will be judged the \u201cbad guy\u201d after Mohamed Salah decided to leave Liverpool. The exchange between the pair that ended with a handshake became the start of the exit rumours that led to Salah confirming he will leave Liverpool at the end of the season.<\/p>\n
Slot acknowledged supporters and critics have placed responsibility on him for much of the club\u2019s recent struggles. \u201cBut that\u2019s in general at the moment, isn\u2019t it?\u201d the under-fire Slot laughed, admitting he feels blamed for most of Liverpool\u2019s struggles this season.<\/p>\n
When asked whether he regretted how he handled Salah, Slot was forthright. \u201cYes. I look back at this season thinking that I made a few decisions that could have been better, but I\u2019m not talking about this specific thing with Mo. I don\u2019t regret many things I did during our one-and-a-half years together, or just longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite Salah returning to the starting line-up after the spat, some observers suggested the manager\u2019s view that no player is undroppable may have contributed to the forward\u2019s choice to depart. Slot rejected that straightforward link and urged caution over assumptions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe assumption that if he\u2019s not playing then he wants to leave, then he would have left one-and-a-half years ago,\u201d Slot argued. \u201cI remember West Ham away when he wasn\u2019t playing [in April 2024]. I wasn\u2019t here then. He didn\u2019t decide to leave.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe assumption is that if you don\u2019t play in these games all of a sudden you want to leave. It is an assumption and maybe it is true or maybe it isn\u2019t, but history has shown he did not do that previously and he had a great season after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slot added that only Salah can explain his motives and warned against drawing firm conclusions from brief incidents. \u201cThe only one who can talk about it is Mo himself. You are making the assumption that he wants to leave because he was out for six days. I\u2019m not sure what you are saying is true.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would be surprised if there\u2019s not a moment when Mo shares his thoughts about why he made the decision he made. It\u2019s not up to me to do that. It\u2019s up to him. And I would not go into all these assumptions. I would be careful with assumptions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finally, Slot also dismissed claims Liverpool\u2019s willingness to let Salah leave on a free transfer was a sign of his willingness to part ways with the Egyptian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot says he does not regret how he handled Mohamed Salah as the forward confirmed he will leave …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10730,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,969,1397],"tags":[1505,1304,1564],"class_list":["post-10731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-premier-league","category-transfer-news","tag-accountability","tag-benching","tag-departure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}