You do not have to be a Hercule Poirot to recognise that Mohamed Salah’s comments about Liverpool’s wretched campaign targeted a figure he did not mention by name.“I want to see Liverpool go back to being the heavy metal attacking team that opponents fear and back to a team that wins trophies,” he wrote on his social media accounts on Saturday afternoon. “That is the football I know how to play and that is the identity that needs to be recovered and kept for good.”“It cannot be negotiable and everyone that joins this club should adapt to it,” he continued. “Winning some games here and there is not what Liverpool should be about…”
For the avoidance of doubt, Salah wants you to know that under head coach Arne Slot, he thinks Liverpool have lost their identity and become an average side.Within a couple of hours, his post on Instagram was “liked” by nine Liverpool team-mates, five of whom had featured in Friday’s 4-2 defeat to Aston Villa.Some of these players might claim they were merely agreeing with Salah’s assessment that improvements are needed at Liverpool but surely they are savvy enough to understand they have had a role themselves across the last 10 months.If it is evidence of pithy, piggy-backed self-flagellation following dire performances, the timing of such self-reflection is unusual given it increases the focus on what is happening at Anfield, where Liverpool, as it stands, need to beat Brentford next weekend to secure Champions League qualification.Instead, Salah’s state-of-the-nation post and the reaction of those who sit beside him in Liverpool’s dressing room combine to create an air of mutiny at the very core of the club.On Sunday, Salah took to social media again, posting a photograph of him at a meal with two of the players who supported him 24 hours earlier — Dominik Szoboszlai and Milos Kerkez — along with Florian Wirtz. Was this another coded message?
