Mohamed Salah was included on Liverpool’s substitutes bench for the fourth Premier League game in succession despite recent efforts to resolve a dispute with manager Arne Slot.<\/p>\n
Slot confirmed he would hold showdown talks with Salah on Friday in an attempt to clear the air between the two, and it was revealed Salah would return to the matchday squad for the visit of Brighton & Hove Albion to Anfield. That return did not translate into a place in the starting XI.<\/p>\n
When the teams were announced around an hour and a quarter before kick-off, Salah was listed among the nine substitutes. He occupied the bench alongside Alexander Isak, the \u00a3125 million British transfer record signing, who has endured a surprisingly slow start to life at Anfield.<\/p>\n
The selection decision extended a pattern of matches in which Salah has not started, even after the manager and player held discussions intended to reconcile differences. Inclusion in the matchday squad confirmed he remains available for selection, but the repeated placement on the bench underlines that Slot has not yet restored him to the starting eleven for Premier League fixtures.<\/p>\n
Isak’s presence on the bench is also notable. Signed for a British record fee, he has struggled to make an immediate impact and his slow adaptation has been a talking point since his arrival. Both forwards were present among the substitutes for Liverpool as the club prepared to face Brighton & Hove Albion at Anfield, a fixture that had attracted attention because of Salah’s status following the manager’s confirmation of talks.<\/p>\n
The club announced the teams in the usual pre-match window, and the decision to start without Salah will attract scrutiny given his profile and recent dialogue with Slot. Further detail on the discussions and selection rationale was not provided at the time teams were released.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Salah returned to the matchday squad but was again among nine substitutes for Liverpool vs Brighton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5061,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,969],"tags":[1081,195,1305],"class_list":["post-5062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-premier-league","tag-adaptation","tag-alexander-isak","tag-bench-selection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5062","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=5062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}