Arne Slot used Liverpool\u2019s 2\u20130 victory over West Ham United to dismiss suggestions that Mohamed Salah\u2019s omission from the starting XI signalled the end of his Anfield role. The deliberate decision to start without Salah came amid a congested December schedule and followed a run of heavy defeats earlier in the month.<\/p>\n
Salah began the game on the bench, with Florian Wirtz taking his usual place in the XI. The selection surprised supporters and prompted criticism elsewhere: \u201cIf you\u2019re one of the players who they\u2019ve signed and you\u2019re on the bench and you\u2019ve seen him not running, then what message does that send to you?\u201d was Wayne Rooney\u2019s take last week.<\/p>\n
Slot said the rotation was driven by upcoming fixtures and tactical considerations. Before kick-off he pointed to the club\u2019s workload: \u201cWe\u2019re playing four games in 10 days,\u201d and after the match he expanded on the reasoning and Salah\u2019s status at the club. \u201cMo has had an unbelievable career at this club and will have a very good future at this club because he’s such a special player,\u201d Slot said postgame. \u201cYou have to decide once in a while to make a certain lineup, and you try to pick the best lineup for every single game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the way [West Ham] set up, with a fullback [Malick Diouf] that\u2019s constantly very high and a winger [Mateus Fernandes] that\u2019s constantly inside, I thought that this could help the team. But like I said, [Salah] has been so important for this club and will be important for this club in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alexander Isak opened the scoring with his first goal for Liverpool and Cody Gakpo wrapped up the win, securing the club\u2019s first domestic victory in a month. The result arrived after defeats by Manchester City, Nottingham Forest and PSV around the November international break, and Slot admitted relief at getting back to winning ways. \u201cThere\u2019s definitely a feeling of relief because if you have lost so many times then winning is important,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Liverpool now faces a run of fixtures that includes Sunderland, Leeds and Inter, with the manager balancing form, fitness and fixture congestion as the season progresses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot insisted Mohamed Salah still has a future at Liverpool after the 2\u20130 win over West Ham. Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4811,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172,438],"tags":[195,299,872],"class_list":["post-4812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","category-west-ham-united","tag-alexander-isak","tag-arne-slot","tag-cody-gakpo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4812","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=4812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}