Liverpool manager Arne Slot has confirmed he does not want Mohamed Salah to leave the club but has not yet decided whether the forward will be involved against Brighton & Hove Albion on Saturday. Slot said a conversation planned for the morning would determine the immediate outcome.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will have a conversation with Mo this morning and the outcome determines how things will look tomorrow.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I need is a conversation with him and the next time I speak about Mo should be with him and not in here. There\u2019s not much more to say about it. I will speak to him today and the outcome of that conversation determines how things will look tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brighton visit is Liverpool\u2019s final match before Salah departs for the Africa Cup of Nations, which runs into the January transfer window. With winter speculation that Salah could leave the club, it is possible he may have already played his final game for Liverpool if he is not reinstated to Slot\u2019s squad for Saturday.<\/p>\n
Slot said there had been extensive discussions behind the scenes and pushed back on suggestions that defensive demands lay at the heart of the issue. \u201cI just said the next time I speak about him should be with him,\u201d the Reds boss continued. \u201cI think there\u2019s been a lot of conversations between his representatives and ours, our representatives and him, between him and me after the Sunderland game.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the decision to omit Salah from the Inter Milan trip, Slot underlined that the club\u2019s hierarchy were involved but left matchday selections to him. \u201cI think we decided as a club, and I was part of that decision, not to take him to the Inter Milan game,\u201d he continued. \u201cI am always in contact with them, but when it comes to the decision-making of the lineup or the squad, they always leave that open to me, but that\u2019s not to say I don\u2019t talk to them. Mainly Richard [Hughes, sporting director], by the way, not Michael [Edwards, chief executive].<\/p>\n
\u201cI talk to him about so many things, but the decision to play a player or to have him in the squad, as I\u2019ve experienced it to now\u2014and I think this will never change\u2014is entirely up to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slot laughed at repeated probing over the situation but made clear he wants Salah to remain. \u201cThe next time I talk about Mo should be with him,\u201d he insisted. \u201cI have no reasons not to want him to stay, if that\u2019s a bit of an answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis club has won a lot, a lot, a lot of games with him, so that\u2019s an answer to your question I think,\u201d Slot concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slot will meet Mohamed Salah before Liverpool decide whether he will be involved against Brighton. .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5041,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,172],"tags":[1211,299,1032],"class_list":["post-5042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-epl","tag-africa-cup-of-nations","tag-arne-slot","tag-contract-disputes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5042","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=5042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}