Mohamed Salah went public about what had been bothering him for weeks at Liverpool and made it clear that his situation with Arne Slot has deteriorated in a way that’s hard to hide. After starting on the bench for the third straight match and watching the team draw 3–3 with Leeds, the forward said he “has no relationship” with the coach and that the club didn’t follow through on promises made during preseason. His comments, published by the English newspaper The Telegraph, shift the tone of the crisis the reigning Premier League champions are living through and put the future of Anfield’s biggest modern icon in a delicate spot.
The strain between Salah and Slot is no longer just a rumor
At 33, recently renewed for two more years and carrying the weight of having led Liverpool to last season’s Premier League title, Salah expected continuity. Instead, he found himself on the bench with no convincing official explanation. According to the player, there were preseason promises that weren’t kept, which led him to say that “we no longer have any relationship”. It’s not a small line. It marks a break.
He also said he “doesn’t know why, but it seems, from what I can see, that someone doesn’t want me at the club”. And he doubled down on his frustration by saying he feels “thrown under a bus” by the way he’s been treated. Those statements don’t leave room for smoothing things over. They show a player who feels ignored, undervalued and, more than anything, kept out of decisions that directly affect his place in the team.
Arne Slot responded in a more restrained way, saying everyone needs to “accept the situation the team is in” and that his choices are based “on the team’s moment”. Still, Salah isn’t talking only about minutes on the field. He’s pointing to a breach of trust.
The technical crisis becomes a relationship crisis
Liverpool is off to a terrible Premier League start and sits only in eighth place with 23 points from 15 matches. The poor form creates the perfect setting for any internal noise to turn into open conflict. And in this case, it’s not just any player. It’s Mohamed Salah, the defining figure of an entire era and a reference point on and off the field.
The situation becomes even more complicated because Salah is about to join the Egyptian national team for the Africa Cup of Nations. In other words, he’ll be away from the club at the exact moment when the internal atmosphere is most fragile. When he returns, he might walk into a different locker room, a coach under heavier pressure or even a scenario in which the relationship is beyond repair.