Liverpool fans have an obligation to defend scapegoated Mohamed Salah after the forward's treatment

Six months ago, Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah was on top of the world.

No player in Premier League history had won the Golden Boot, Playmaker Award and PFA Player of the Year in the same season until the Egyptian did it in 2021/22. Last season, he won it all again and became the first to do so whilst also winning the Premier League title.

This season, equipped with £450 million worth of summer signings, Liverpool have fallen off a cliff. So has Mohamed Salah. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, the club, the fanbase and the media all seem to have decided that the team’s form, winning just two of their last 10 Premier League games, is mainly the result of an historic Salah drop-off.

Mohamed Salah may have played his final game for Liverpool

Let’s be clear, players of Salah’s calibre can and often do drop off once they enter their 30s. That is not unusual. But when an entire team bar a select minority drop off concurrently, that is usually a managerial issue.

The blame extends beyond Arne Slot and lands at the feet of Liverpool’s background staff at all levels. From those who crunch numbers, write cheques and draw up tactics to those who look after the fitness levels and emotional health of the players.

Attempts to argue otherwise are pointlessly contrarian; they’re cheap headlines written to revise the story of a club in freefall and make it the fault of one stellar individual who has done more than anyone to contribute to Liverpool’s modern success since Jurgen Klopp joined.

While most clubs would fight back against such unfair narratives to protect their player, Liverpool didn’t. Instead, the club sat back idly as Arne Slot benched Mohamed Salah for three consecutive matches, something the Egyptian has never experienced at Liverpool.

Make no mistake, this was not rotation, it was a statement. But what is the statement? To understand that, you must place yourself into the boots of Mohamed Salah and question what recent events tell you.

Mohamed Salah has the most chances created for Liverpool in the Premier League this season. The second most Big Chances Created, the most passes into the penalty area, the second-most successful take-ons, the second most goals scored. For his critics, none of that matters. So the narrative was recently changed to argue that Mohamed Salah doesn’t defend.

Yet in the game prior to Salah being benched, a 1-4 loss to PSV at Anfield, he covered more ground than his wing partner Cody Gakpo, won the same number of duels, and registered the most xA (Expected Assists) of any Liverpool player (0.89) in a single match this season, with two Big Chances Created. In comparison, Gakpo created zero Big Chances and even missed a Big Chance himself (data via Opta).

For Arne Slot, the solution was simple: Give Cody Gakpo three consecutive starts and relegate Mo Salah to the bench. As expected, Liverpool’s defensive failures continued. They shipped four goals to Sunderland and Leeds in two draws, conceding almost 2.0 xG (Expected Goals) to the latter, who are just two points above the drop zone.

Cue Mohamed Salah’s fiery interview last Saturday evening after Liverpool’s 3-3 draw against Leeds. The Egyptian said: “The club has thrown me under the bus. I’m very disappointed. I have done so much for this club… I had a good relationship with the manager then, suddenly, there’s no relationship - I don’t know why.”

But it’s what Salah said next that gave his words a weight nobody could have foreseen: “It seems to me that someone doesn’t want me at the club.”

So, what was Liverpool’s statement in benching Salah? The Egyptian appears to know the answer, and it begins with an apparent absence of a meritocracy at Liverpool. Recent decisions, particularly the choice to start Gakpo thrice over Salah but also the inclusion of similarly underperforming players Ibrahima Konaté and Alexis Mac Allister in the starting line-ups, suggests that Slot is not taking into account individual form when making changes.

The reason Salah believes he’s been exiled from Liverpool’s team is that there has been a directive passed down from within the club to prepare for life without the attacker ahead of selling him in January. To Fenway Sports Group (FSG), Liverpool is a business. Football is described as a cruel game, and billionaire owners too often care about nothing more than what continues to line their pockets. Cynics may argue the sale of Salah would certainly achieve that.

For Liverpool, a club with strong working class roots, the fanbase’s disavowal of Mohamed Salah is much closer to towing the company line for American billionaires than critiquing the unfair power gap between employee and employer that all footballers are subjected to when higher-ups decide, often unfairly, that their time is done.

What Salah has experienced this season is a tactical breakdown from an under-pressure manager who has overseen more defeats in 2025 than the often scrutinised Ruben Amorim. Salah has taken a Liverpool career-worst shots per 90, and his average xG per shot is also at an all-time low. His manager has a responsibility to service the holding Golden Boot winner in dangerous spaces, and Arne Slot is not holding up that end of the bargain (data via Opta).

A commonly misreported quote from the Egyptian’s interview, which has fuelled claims that Salah believes he’s earned his spot in the team through past performances, tells us that he knows his form is still there, it just isn’t being unlocked.

“I earn it”, said the Egyptian, in reference to his place in the line-up. Not the past tense phrase ‘I’ve earned it’, as many media outlets have reported since last Saturday.

For a player who has long been reported to be the first into the training ground and the last out, and an attacker whose underlying statistics are almost identical to that of a three-time starting forward in Gakpo across Liverpool’s recent games, it’s hard to argue against him. He is earning it, even if that’s only because the standards have never been lower to get into Liverpool’s starting line-up since Jurgen Klopp joined the club in 2015.

‘Nobody is bigger than the club’ scream football fans, but what is the club in this instance? Is it the cheque-writing billionaires that ultimately bankroll the lives of the players, possibly puppeteering fans into accepting the sale of an all-time club legend by freezing him out of the team?

Is it a manager whose career-best achievement was largely down to the freakish performances of Salah last year, now building a side that excludes the Egyptian because selling him may be in the club’s best financial interests?

Or is it the players that die every week on the pitch for their fans? Salah gave Liverpool and its followers the greatest memories of their lives for almost a decade. He has dealt with the highs and lows of being one of the world’s most scrutinised and greatest players, all to bring Liverpool silverware that the club hadn’t won in decades.

It’s almost impossible to foresee a positive resolution to this situation, but, make no mistake, the Egyptian will go down as the greatest player to ever play for Liverpool. And if fans accept what could prove to be the hounding of a legend of Salah’s calibre out of their club, it might be time to assess their own belief in the validity of their ethos, and whether they really do prevent their players from walking alone.