Some of us saw the decline coming.
Alright, I’ll admit it. When I said, to great Scouse scorn, that Liverpool would live to regret not accepting a £200m offer for Mohamed Salah at the end of the 2023-24 season that I foresaw an earlier deterioration than we are witnessing now.
But here we are. Having again rejected eyewatering Saudi Arabian advances and given the Egyptian a structure-busting new contract in April, Liverpool let fan pressure and romanticism take over and have clung onto a player who has passed his sell-by date.
Despite what the most optimistic Liverpool supporters will tell you, this is no blip. Salah hasn’t come down with a severe bout of the yips. Salah has had dips in form in the past, like any forward, but this is different. The player with a near inconceivable Premier League goal return has scored five times in his last 22 appearances in all competitions since mid-March – after netting 32 in his first 41 appearances last season.
Liverpool went ahead and built a new strikeforce around Salah, without the help of the Saudis. The problem now is they are stuck with an unmovable faded figure, who is paid too much and means too much to supporters to leave out of the side. And that is a big, big problem.
You have to know when to let go. That is what separates the good from the great. Sir Alex Ferguson was the master at it. He got castigated from all angles for selling David Beckham, in his prime, to Real Madrid. The next player to take the number seven shirt? Cristiano Ronaldo.
Ruud van Nistelrooy is the best out-and-out striker Manchester United have had in the Premier League era. Ferguson believed he had got the best out of his Dutch marksman, so just after his 30th birthday, Madrid again came calling. Two years later and United won the Champions League with the most complete forward line in their history.
Salah is not your average 33-year-old. He has more abs than ribs. But even at the peak of what you can do with the human body, conjuring the desire to keep up with the unrelenting pace of pushing for a Premier League title may even be beyond one of the best to ever do it.
One telling stat sums up the decline in aura. After another toothless showing in defeat to United on Sunday, Salah has completed as many take-ons this season as United stand-in goalkeeper Altay Bayindir. Nobody in the top-flight has fewer completed dribbles, from those who have attempted 10 or more.
That is further evidence this is no glitch in the Merseyside Matrix – this is a crisis of confidence few will be able to recover from.
“It is normal,” Slot said of Salah’s decline, worryingly missing the point. “The first five or six games every question was about the new players now you ask me about another. As a team we expect more, I don’t think it is usual we are missing so many chances.
“Mo had a good chance. This weekend again set pieces are such a crucial part. We are the team that creates the most in open play, I don’t think that has changed. But that is not the only way to win a game. That is what United showed today and other teams.”
Slot can ignore it as much as he likes, but this is a £350m mess of his and the transfer hierarchy’s making. Revamping their strikeforce appeared to take an already great team to the next level, ending the title race, in many pessimists’ eyes, before a ball had even been kicked.
There was not enough shelf space for such upheaval, however. Signing Europe’s most exciting talent should guarantee success, that is true, but if you have to leave £250m of it on the bench to accommodate for an undroppable spent force, you are stuck in football’s equivalent of a Kafkaesque nightmare.
There was an easy solution, that would have suited all parties. And no legacy would have been harmed in the process.
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