Mohamed Salah has been restored to Liverpool’s squad for the game against Brighton & Hove Albion after face-to-face talks with Arne Slot.
An improvement in relations follows Salah’s spectacular outburst last Saturday when, among other complaints after being dropped from the starting line-up, he said his relationship with the Liverpool head coach had broken down.
A stand-off had ensued since but eased sufficiently on Friday when Slot and Salah spoke at the club’s AXA training headquarters and there was enough ground given for the player to be included for the visit of Brighton.
It is understood that issues persist after the events of the past week and they will continue to be tackled by the Liverpool hierarchy and Salah’s representative, Ramy Abbas, while the Egypt forward is at the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon).
In the meantime there is breathing space. The restoration of Salah to the match-day squad after he trained with the first team has been described as in the best interests of the club and came with Slot admitting he had not been “enjoying” the fallout.
Salah had previously identified Brighton’s visit as an opportunity to say goodbye to Anfield. He said he had invited his mother to attend in case it proved to be his last game for the club after 8½ years in which he has established himself as one of their greatest players and moved to third on Liverpool’s list of all-time goalscorers.
He is now scheduled to join up with Egypt afterwards for their Afcon campaign in Morocco, with the final of the tournament not scheduled until January 18.
Slot said prior to the tête-à-tête with the 33-year-old that he had no reason for wanting the attacker, who helped Liverpool win the Premier League title last season, to leave the club and conceded that he had found the situation uncomfortable.
Salah said he had been “thrown under the bus” after being left out of the starting line-up in recent weeks
PETER BYRNE/PA
The Dutchman would not go into detail about who initiated the meeting but, prior to the get-together, he said: “The biggest factor is: do the best for the team and for the club. I haven’t said this before, but I can say I am definitely not enjoying this situation. It’s not like I’m happy we are in this situation by far.
“We have won the league together and he has done so much for the club. Ideally, you are not in a situation like this with your player. I am far from enjoying it, but I have to make my line-ups doing what is best for the club and for the team. That’s not to say that I [always get the desired outcome], but it is about my opinion. To tell you that I like it — no, I don’t like it and I’m not enjoying it.
“If I can, and it is also good for the team and for the club, I would definitely prefer to [avoid a media circus on Saturday], because I don’t think it’s in the interests of the team and the club. I don’t think it’s a circus for me. But if it is a circus, that is not helpful for anyone. So you try to avoid it as long as you can do what is best for the team.”
It has been a dramatic week for the champions with Salah omitted from Slot’s plans for Tuesday’s Champions League tie with Inter Milan after his outburst in the wake of last weekend’s 3-3 draw with Leeds United.
The game at Elland Road had been the third successive match in which Salah had been demoted to the role of substitute and his frustration prompted the incendiary interview after the match in which he claimed he had been thrown “under the bus” and was being made the scapegoat for the team’s poor run of form.
While Liverpool were preparing for the game in the San Siro, which they won 1-0, Salah posted a picture on social media of himself training alone. Salah then met the former Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson, now of Brentford, in London for a meal on Wednesday, with the duo remaining close having shared title and Champions League success together under Jürgen Klopp.
Henderson also spent six months with Al-Ettifaq in the Saudi Pro League after leaving Anfield in the summer of 2023.
In the aftermath of Salah’s tirade, interest in the player from the Middle East had again intensified, with Al-Ittihad, who had a £150million offer for the winger rejected by Liverpool in September 2023, among the clubs monitoring matters.
Liverpool have won two and drawn two of the four matches Salah has not started or been involved in and Slot maintained that all selection decisions had been made by him, without interference from the club’s sporting director, Richard Hughes, or Michael Edwards, the chief executive of football for Fenway Sports Group, which owns Liverpool.
Slot also said he had discussed with Salah the reasons for leaving him out in a manner that reflected the former Basel, Chelsea and Roma player’s standing at the club. Several pundits had suggested Salah was entitled to be treated differently from other players at Liverpool given his stellar performances and Slot insisted that was the case.
“It depends on their status, how many times they’ve played, how long they are already inside the club,” Slot said prior to the meeting. “For me it’s obvious that it works like that. A young player or a squad player who has played once or twice doesn’t get the same time or information as a player who is playing on a regular basis, let alone if you are not playing a player who has played for so many years as a starter.
“[If someone claimed differently] that is then a situation where people have no clue how much I spoke to him. I know how much I spoke to him. It’s up to others to decide, if they knew, if that was enough. If it would have been 250 hours, was 250 hours enough? I know how much the two of us spoke, not only in the week before West Ham or before Sunderland or before Leeds, but also in recent weeks and months.”