Liverpool manager Arne Slot has confirmed Mohamed Salah “wasn’t happy” after being omitted from the starting line-up for the trip to West Ham United, a match the club won 2-0 without their talisman. On that occasion, J\u00fcrgen Klopp brought Salah off the bench. Over the weekend, Slot did not call upon him at all. The last time Salah spent an entire Premier League match among the substitutes was June 2020.<\/p>\n
Slot had initially described the decision as load management, and the issue resurfaced ahead of the visit from Sunderland. On the topic, the Dutch manager accepted that frustration was natural, saying: “It was a normal reaction for a player who is good enough to play for us\u2014and I say that mildly as he\u2019s been so outstanding for this club and will be in the future,” Slot shrugged. “He wasn\u2019t happy he wasn\u2019t starting but he wasn\u2019t the only one.”<\/p>\n
Slot praised Salah’s conduct despite his disappointment. “But the way he behaved was as you\u2019d expect from such a professional: he supported his teammates and handled himself really well.<\/p>\n
You can\u2019t be a player that has to play every three days to high standard but he\u2019s so disciplined and knows what to do to stay fit. Whether he plays well, doesn\u2019t play well, plays or doesn\u2019t play, he\u2019ll always be that top professional.”<\/p>\n
Salah’s rare absences in the Premier League during his Liverpool career have typically come because of his involvement in the Africa Cup of Nations. Egypt are heading to the continental tournament in Morocco with ambitions of winning the competition for the first time in Salah\u2019s international career. Debate has centred on when club sides will lose their African internationals.<\/p>\n
Slot confirmed Liverpool expect to retain Salah until the AFCON deadline of Dec. 15. “It [the deadline] is Dec. 15,” he told assembled media. “As always there is the nation involved, the player involved and the club. There are always talks about what is the best for all three of us.<\/p>\n
We have to find a way to play without him as he\u2019ll not be here. That\u2019s true.” That deadline would allow Salah to feature in up to four more fixtures for Liverpool unless he is again left on the bench. The Egypt captain, however, is guaranteed to miss a trip to Tottenham Hotspur (Dec. 20) and the visit of relegation-battling Wolverhampton Wanderers (Dec. 27).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arne Slot: Mohamed Salah “wasn’t happy” to be dropped; Liverpool plan to retain him until Dec. 15 .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4831,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[1211,299,1288],"class_list":["post-4832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-africa-cup-of-nations","tag-arne-slot","tag-player-mohamed-salah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4832","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=4832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}