Mohamed Salah appears to have removed references to Liverpool from his social media accounts after being dropped for the Eintracht Frankfurt game. Liverpool bounced back from four straight defeats by thrashing Frankfurt 5-1 on Wednesday night in the Champions League, but Salah was on the bench.
The Egyptian was dropped by manager Arne Slot following a succession of ineffective performances, including in the 2-1 defeat by Manchester United on Sunday. He came on in the 74th minute with the points already safe against Frankfurt but could not contribute and in fact made his situation worse.
Salah was widely criticised by Liverpool fans after deciding not to pass to a wide-open Florian Wirtz when through on goal. Instead, he shot and saw his attempt saved by the Frankfurt goalkeeper, doing himself no favours with the supporters or his manager.
The 33-year-old signed a new two-year contract with Liverpool earlier in the year, but is now going through a difficult spell. And it appears the outside noise has got to him, with changes made to his social media profiles on Thursday.
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Salah’s accounts on Instagram and X saw changes, with his 65.9m followers on the former seeing a black and white display picture of himself with the header “Always believing”, without any mention of Liverpool. Meanwhile, on X where he has 19.4m followers, Salah’s photo is now one of him with his children with no bio. His posts about Liverpool remain.
Slot chose to play Alexander Isak and Hugo Ekitike up front together on Wednesday, with Cody Gakpo and Wirtz in support. The gamble paid off with Liverpool banging in five goals after conceding.
Salah has three goals and three assists in 12 games this season, with his form tailing off dramatically of late. Slot was forced to explain his decision before kick-off. He said: "What we need to try today is to create as many chances as the last few weeks, because that is very helpful that we two players who can score," he told TNT Sports.
"We are hoping and expecting Jeremie Frimpong and Cody Gakpo to create something for these two with Florian Wirtz's creativity in and around our two No.9s.
"So that is looking at how they normally set up and that's the idea. They can play together, they showed it against United, although it was the second half, but it means our midfield needs to be structured a little differently. Where we normally play with one [number] six, now we need Curtis [Jones] and Dom [Szoboszlai] to be more defensively-minded than one of the two usually is."
Jamie Carragher is clear that Slot is taking the right approach with Salah. “When Mo Salah isn't being the legendary Mo Salah, he gets treated like one of the other players, which is right,” he said on CBS Sports.
“He's 33 years of age and Liverpool will have three games in six days. At the moment, if he isn't at his best, he shouldn't play three games in six days. There are other options there as well. We know Liverpool have spent a lot of money. Liverpool have got a big game at the weekend as well, so great decision, Arne."
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