Selling Salah Solves So Many 'Fading Superstar' Issues

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“Was our love too strong to die?

Or were we just too weak to kill it?”

The The, “August and September” (1989, “Mind Bomb”)

For years, taking Mo Salah off could lead to dramas. Now they happen before he even takes to the field.

Sublime, once; but now sloppy and stroppy.

Years ago – well before Salah was on the slide – I called it the phenomenon the ‘toxic rot of the ageing superstar’. They lose their skills, and it’s painful for them to not be able to do what they once could. They lash out in all directions. They fizz with frustration.

Liverpool don’t need big-name players being publicly petulant; and in some ways, the bigger the player, the worst it is.

Salah has been sensational for Liverpool since arriving seven years ago. But things move on.

And Jürgen Klopp has been the key to him and others becoming great players, and the manager is always the one who knows best; Steven Gerrard was constantly frustrated with Rafa Benítez, until Gerrard had to start thinking about the bigger picture and not just his own game … and then he understood Rafa Benítez.

It’s like becoming a parent, and suddenly understanding your own parents, and how they have to make sacrifices, and how life is tough for them too, and see the bigger picture.

Even Jordan Henderson had a strop, then lived to regret it. Now, the situation is about not making life harder for the man who follows Klopp.

Arne Slot has much more personality than Erik ten Hag, albeit as both are Dutch and bald they are erroneously compared, as if sharing physical characteristics makes you the same.

Slot speaks better, far more charismatic English; has not relied on the Ajax academy and their relative super-wealth within Holland to succeed; and has taken two financially-strapped, stumbling outsiders to title challenges (one won, the other denied when lockdowns arrived), European finals, cup successes, with cutting-edge ideas.

But ten Hag – a kind of joyless technocrat, aided by the wally with the brolly, whose teams play with far, far less possession and oomf than Slot’s – was utterly undermined by the whole Cristiano Ronaldo sideshow. And while Ronaldo was eventually ousted, the mind-virus had spread.

The young players who looked up to Ronaldo – idolised him – just went about undermining ten Hag too. This is why dickheads (which can just been selfish, non-team players) ruin team harmony, and as he had at Juventus, Ronaldo was more trouble than he was worth (whereas when he was younger, he was worth the trouble).

Ronaldo, losing the plot as his powers waned, turned Old Trafford toxic. For all his personal training professionalism (like Salah), he contaminated the squad, and ten Hag has had so many issues with big-name young players (and not-so-young ones like Marcus Rashford) doing unprofessional things. If Ronaldo does it, why can’t we?

Salah is not at Ronaldo levels of self-destruction yet, and has always had a lovely Zen side, playing with a smile; but this is where the shit hits the proverbial.

Past brilliance is to be appreciated, and watched back on video for years to come. But no one can live on past glories.

I’ve been analysing and writing about Liverpool FC for 25 years now, including thousands of articles and loads of books. If I just started banging my head against the keyboard instead of typing, you’d rightly say that I was past my best.

(What do you mean, “it would be more interesting”?)

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(Oh yeah, you have a point!)

Salah is now entering the risk zone for the toxic rot of the ageing superstar, and this is not a good start. He’s probably realising that he hasn’t been offered a new deal, too.

I saved this article from a few weeks ago, as it’s a warning:

Cristiano Ronaldo, what are you doing? This is not an impetuous, naive, 18-year-old rapscallion who can be forgiven because of the recklessness of youth. This is a 39-year-old man, a father of five children, who has won almost every trophy that matters. What is he doing?

The stroppy, sulky, strutting peacock act has been a major part of Ronaldo’s personality throughout his career — be it refusing to go on as a substitute for Manchester United, leaving the stadium after being substituted, slapping a child’s phone out of their hand, not celebrating goals scored by team-mates because they didn’t pass to him, throwing water at a cameraman, or screaming at a referee and shoving a fan who was trying to take a selfie.

In fact, come to think of it, all these things have happened in the past three or four years. Instead of having some decorum as he heads to his forties, Ronaldo has regressed into toddler mode and an era of extreme, ill-tempered sulkiness.

When his team loses, when a referee sends him off, when a team-mate doesn’t pass to him, when the manager substitutes him, when the crowd sing Messi’s name, he has a strop.

Maybe it’s just a phase? He’ll grow out of it — they always do.

I think that Jürgen Klopp could deal with Salah, given that he’s Jürgen Klopp. Whether he cares to do so with three games left is another matter.

Klopp could patch things up, as he has with others in the past, but it’s more the issue about not handing over a ticking time-bomb to Arne Slot.

Slot is miles better than ten Hag in so many ways (and will be supported in a role as head coach by Richard Hughes and Michael Edwards, and wide arrange of coaching staff, analytics gurus and elite scouts), but ten Hag was undermined by Ronaldo, then Jadon Sancho, Rashford, Antony, Alejandro Garnacho and various others.

Slot is a brilliant manager/head coach, but he doesn’t need superstar dramas. He’s not got that ultra-boss cachet yet, just as ten Hag did not when arriving at Man United; and the players made sure he never did.

Liverpool’s biggest superstar is Mo Salah. But he’s not the club’s best player anymore. Not even close.

And he owes much of his success to Klopp, having not been half the player prior to 2017 that he became after; ditto Philippe Coutinho, Mané, Henderson, Gini Wijnaldum and many others who slung their hooks and … well, how did that go?

If Salah took too long to get on as a sub, maybe as he was sulking at not starting and not coming on earlier, then Klopp had a right to point that out.

The manager, as the manager, is always right. If he asks you to do something, you do it. That’s how football works. That’s how life works. If you don’t like it, you move on. You’re not the boss; he is.

Klopp, like all good managers, then tried to de-escalate, saying it was resolved. Salah then responded with fire.

Salah has just a year left, and his numbers are way down across the board (another good season for goals but many of them penalties).

Bar creating chances from deep – and I loved that side of his game in the first half of the season – he’s a shadow of his former self; his goals tally boosted by those penalties, when Alexis Mac Allister should now be the taker. Indeed, had Cody Gakpo, deemed to be having a bad season, taken the penalties, he could have nearly 25 goals, and Salah would barely be in the teens.

Selling this summer makes sense on so many levels.

Another big name and big personality is Virgil Van Dijk, but he’ll be more amenable to a fellow Dutchman as boss and want to protect him, as captain. While the last few games has seen him look understandably leggy given the football he’s played, van Dijk has been immense this season.

Alisson and Trent Alexander-Arnold seem like they’d knuckle down for anyone decent. Neither is likely to be surplus to requirements. Future superstars like Alexis Mac Allister and Dominik Szoboszlai seem like low maintenance.

Most of Liverpool’s big-name, big-ego, big-deliverers have been, done it, and gone. The majority of the squad now are up-and-coming, hungry, with points to prove. Much like Salah in 2017.

Sadio Mané, bar a famous spat with Salah that Klopp sorted with minimal fuss, was fairly low-maintenance, but then he joyfully told the world he was quitting Liverpool on the eve of the 2022 Champions League final, went to Bayern, stunk the place out, punched teammates and ended up in a retirement league.

With Salah and Roberto Firmino, Mané formed a trio that will be remembered for as long as football is talked about. I will forever love the football those guys played.

But at some point you only want to see these players wearing the red of Liverpool in legends’ games; a beefcake Fernando Torres, for example, of one of many who left in a huff and never felt any love again.

No player is ever bigger than the club, but you cannot even afford a player to be bigger than the manager.

It unbalances things, and if the manager does not have full authority, he’s in trouble.

Klopp arrived with an aura and gravitas that Slot does not yet possess; but then, no one does, perhaps bar Pep Guardiola, who continues to mix his ideas in a pot with the most money.

Klopp added to his gravitas with Champions League finals and league title challenges, winning one of each. No one at that level could replace Klopp, and no manager needs to be treading on eggshells around a superstar.

So Salah could make life harder for Slot, and none us want that. Equally, Edwards and Hughes could nip this off at the bud. Edwards’ ultimate authority, through his new role at FSG now and his status as the best Director of Football English football has seen, means he can sort this, so that even Hughes doesn’t get tainted by it.

If Salah was still peak Salah, turning 32, it would be less of an issue.

If he had more time left on his contract it would be a bigger problem in some ways, but a less natural time to sell in others. This is the make-or-break summer anyway.

If the Saudis weren’t sniffing, it would be different.

But Salah is a melting icon, and a player indulged in, doing almost no off-the-ball work, when once he pressed and did so much. That’s age for you.

His defensive work is non-existent, which may be why the team actually seemed better in his absence. Aside from getting a ton of touches in the box, as you’d expect from a Liverpool attacker, these numbers below, via Opta and FBRef, are alarming.

These are percentiles out of the top five leagues, and to basically be amongst the very worst in three of the five areas is alarming, while the carries and take-ons have fallen to mediocre levels, especially given how much of the ball he sees in a high-possession, constantly-attacking team (including in the box, as you can see).

His creativity was superb earlier in the season, but then he seemed to revert to manic “I must shoot all the time” mode, which included a frankly ludicrous, almost self-indulgent 12 shots in one game. About five of them were utterly reckless, with teammates better placed.

Be selfish at times, as a striker; but also selfless, and alert, when the situation requires. Salah seemed very humble when he arrived, but caught up in the hype around that first golden boot.

Fame changes people and I couldn’t live with his level of fame; I’m a mediocre person by comparison, and I respect elite athletes and what they endure. However, when your time is up, your time is up. You can’t sugar-coat it. You can’t hide, just like seeing once-great singers, broken by time, drugs and cigarettes, caterwauling out of key.

And as you can see, and as I shared on here for subscribers last week, going back two years, he can’t score from anywhere outside a narrow box-within-the-box anymore.

Yet he still shoots from all kinds of angles, to no avail.

Goals on the left (green), all shots on the right; 2022/23 and then 2023/24, via Understat.

Salah, as I’d already noticed two years ago via the eye-test, cannot score from wider areas any more. There’s no conviction or whip in his far-post efforts, from which he made his name.

His one goal from distance in the last two seasons was with an open goal, the keeper stranded. Everything successful is grouped around the penalty spot, including taking the penalties. In that position he remains elite, as his shooting is pretty much now just side-foot finishes.

But every dot that isn’t green is a wasted attack.

They may be a lack of self-awareness in that he hasn’t seemed to realise that he can’t score from those positions anymore, and maybe Klopp has been too kind – to protective of his player’s ego – to point it out.

(Edit: it also reminds me of Ronaldo’s direct free-kicks, and how he stopped scoring from them, but kept taking them, over and over and over. Salah used to score from wider angles, and further out, but doesn’t any more; yet keeps taking those shots.)

A rampant self-delusion is at the heart of all great athletes, or they’d never start in the first place; except unlike other walks of life, where expertise can grown, you reach a point where it can only get worse, not better. By the early 30s the writing is usually on the wall.

Salah hasn’t seemed to wise up to his own diminishing powers, which all players have to do at some point. (And indeed, we all have to do in life.)

Salah will be remembered as a bona fide Liverpool legend, but I only want to see a statue of Klopp, not Salah. Murals - great. Memories – great. But the manager has been the driving force of the success.

So I’d sell Salah, given his dwindling numbers, his massive wages, his dwindling value (maybe £70m this summer to £0 next summer), and his apparently increased petulance, before he goes full Ronaldo; unless he can come to terms with being a bit-part player, and getting old for a position where age is the cruelest (wingers melt sooner than anyone else).

Indeed, Slot likes to take his wingers off early, as he wants them to run defenders ragged, and press off the ball, and then bring someone else on to take over. Salah doesn’t fit the profile for any of that anymore, including being happy to do it.

I will always love how Mo has played with a smile on his face, and rarely retaliated to seven years of kickings. I will always recognise his true greatness, albeit as part of a functioning team, not an individual parade.

But this is football, and you need to be ruthless. It’s not about sentiment, beyond saying fond farewells when there’s nothing left to play for.

To “let a player’s legs go on someone else’s pitch” was good enough logic from Bob Paisley before even James Milner was born. Paisley was quietly ruthless, which is why standards never dropped in his nine years as boss – the best nine years English football has ever seen, with six league titles, three Champions of Europe, and various cups.

Then again, Klopp’s nine have been the best of my adult lifetime.

Unless Salah can grow old gracefully – and the truth is, few players of that brilliance do – then let it be someone else’s problem.

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