Wayne Rooney publicly questioned Mohamed Salah’s defensive contribution after Liverpool’s recent defeat, drawing on both the match events and historical parallels from his own career.<\/p>\n
The match detail that prompted criticism saw Conor Bradley struggle against Alejandro Garnacho, and the eventual winner came down Liverpool\u2019s right side when a Blues overload handed Cucurella the chance to cross in to Est\u00eav\u00e3o for a tap-in. Rooney, introduced as a Manchester United legend, singled out Salah’s involvement during that phase.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the last week, I\u2019d question his work ethic,\u201d he told The Wayne Rooney Show . \u201cWe know he doesn\u2019t always get back and defend as much, but I think, the Chelsea game… his full back was getting torn apart and he\u2019s watching, not getting back, not helping him.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlayers like [Virgil] van Dijk and Alisson, who obviously wasn\u2019t playing, the leaders in the team should be telling him, \u2018You need to help out.\u2019 For me, that was a worry. He\u2019s looked a little bit lost over the last week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rooney drew a direct comparison with a similar situation he experienced alongside Cristiano Ronaldo at Manchester United, noting how a manager can adapt to preserve attacking talent while restoring balance. He referenced tactical adjustments under Sir Alex Ferguson and suggested manager Arne Slot could consider similar solutions at Liverpool.<\/p>\n
\u201cCertainly over the last six months, the Liverpool fans I know in Liverpool were on his back,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause he was scoring goals and winning you get away with it, but I think the best managers see that and they adjust.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not saying you leave him out the team. We had it with Ronaldo at Man Utd where, similarly, he wouldn\u2019t track back as much, so Fergie moved him inside. So, you\u2019ve still got that balance in the team, you\u2019ve still got the work getting done but he moved him inside so he\u2019s still on the pitch, because he\u2019s always got a chance of scoring goals and winning games.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you get a little bit older as well, I think Slot maybe could have looked at it and thought, \u2018You know what, Chelsea are killing us down this side.\u2019 Move him inside a little bit, even if you put [Florian] Wirtz out there, then you still have that work ethic behind you but then have that brilliance of Salah to go and score goals. If I was a Liverpool fan that would be a little bit of a concern for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rooney\u2019s remarks focused on work rate and tactical options rather than questioning selection outright, and they have added to discussion about how Liverpool should respond to the defeat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rooney questioned Mohamed Salah’s defensive contribution after Liverpool’s recent defeat to Chelsea. .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3602,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,969],"tags":[227,299,1120],"class_list":["post-3603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-premier-league","tag-alejandro-garnacho","tag-arne-slot","tag-work-ethic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3603","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=3603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}