Mohamed Salah\u2019s public criticism of Liverpool and manager Arne Slot led to a swift reaction from the coach, who stressed that politeness should not be mistaken for weakness. The 33-year-old forward had said he was being \u201cthrown under the bus\u201d for Liverpool\u2019s poor run of form and claimed he has \u201cno relationship\u201d with Slot. Less than 48 hours later, Salah was left out of Liverpool\u2019s squad to face Inter in the Champions League on Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n
Slot, 47 years old, spent more than 10 minutes answering questions at his pre-game news conference on Monday and outlined how the club had communicated with the player. \u201cWe know he is not travelling with us, so that was the only communication that\u2019s been there from us to him. Before Saturday, the two of us have spoken a lot, sometimes longer and sometimes shorter,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s not the way I feel but he has the right to feel how he feels things. I haven\u2019t felt that at all until Saturday evening for sure.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsually I am calm and polite but it doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m weak. When a player says things like that we have to react as a club. And you can see he is not here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slot acknowledged surprise at Salah\u2019s remarks given the forward\u2019s behaviour in recent weeks. \u201cWhen I didn\u2019t play him anymore, usually players don\u2019t like the manager that much, but he was very respectful to the staff members and to his teammates and he trained really hard so it was a bit of a surprise when I heard he made those comments,\u201d he said. “But it\u2019s not the first time a player hasn\u2019t played. My reaction to that is also clear and that\u2019s why he isn\u2019t here.”<\/p>\n
Even with the fallout, Slot left the door open for reconciliation. \u201cI\u2019m a firm believer that there is always a return for a player.\u201d he stated. The manager declined to say whether Salah would be available for the visit of Brighton & Hove Albion at Anfield on Saturday, the player\u2019s last possible appearance before joining Egypt for the Africa Cup of Nations. The comments come amid a difficult run for the defending English champions, who have won just two of their last 10 games in the English top-flight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot says politeness is not weakness as Salah is omitted from the Inter squad and relations remain strained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4967,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,969],"tags":[299,1304,1215],"class_list":["post-4968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-premier-league","tag-arne-slot","tag-benching","tag-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4968","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=4968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}