Arne Slot says Mohamed Salah was \u201cnot happy\u201d at being dropped for Liverpool\u2019s win over West Ham United but has responded positively to the omission.<\/p>\n
It was the first time the Egyptian attacker had not started a Premier League game for the league champions since April 2024 and followed a poor run of form.<\/p>\n
However, Salah will come back into contention for Wednesday\u2019s visit of Sunderland with the Liverpool head coach considering whether to freshen up his side during a busy week which concludes on Saturday with a trip to Leeds United.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, a player is not happy he isn\u2019t playing,\u201d Slot said. \u201cHe was not the only one who wasn\u2019t happy he wasn\u2019t starting. But the way he behaved is what you would expect from the professional he is.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was very supportive of his team-mates, handled himself really well during the day and yesterday again in the session as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Salah has only scored five goals in all competitions so far this season compared to 13 at the same stage of the 2024-25 campaign, but Slot backed him to get back to his \u201csuperhuman\u201d best.<\/p>\n
Slot revealed the 33-year-old will be available for Liverpool\u2019s Premier League home clash with Brighton & Hove Albion on December 13 before leaving to join up with the Egypt squad ahead of the Africa Cup of Nations. There had been some doubt whether he would be able to feature in that fixture.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a date, it\u2019s December 15,\u201d Slot said.<\/p>\n
Liverpool were boosted on Monday by the return of Conor Bradley to team training with the Northern Ireland international targeting Saturday\u2019s game against Leeds for his return.<\/p>\n
Jeremie Frimpong is on course to return to team training next week with Slot\u2019s right-sided options set to grow ahead of Salah\u2019s impending departure.<\/p>\n
\u201cConor is not doing everything 100 per cent yet. We have to manage that a little bit, so don\u2019t get your hopes up too soon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good thing is that he\u2019s done certain things with the group already. We expect the same with Jeremie next week. Jeremie will miss out on at least three more games, but I hope Conor will be available for Leeds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alexander Isak scored his first Premier League goal for the club against West Ham as Florian Wirtz shone in an advanced midfield role and Joe Gomez was given a first league start of the season at right-back.<\/p>\n
Slot added that they would not be able to play three matches in a week and selection decisions would be taken following training sessions and fitness assessments.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo see Alex score his first goal was also very positive,\u201d Slot said. \u201cHe could not have played five to 10 minutes more than he played because he told me yesterday he felt a bit of cramp.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arne Slot says Mohamed Salah was \u201cnot happy\u201d at being dropped for Liverpool\u2019s win over West Ham United…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[3450,403,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-326301","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-liverpool","9":"tag-soccer","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}