Mo Salah is proving he’s still got what it takes to be at the top level with Liverpool, so why has his contract been allowed to become a saga?
I LOVE that they made it about Casemiro.
Dom Szoboszlai and Ryan Gravenberch pressing and filling in and making life hell for them and all they want to do is talk about Casemiro. I knew they’d given up on the game as of that moment.
Scapegoating is always interesting. It usually arrives with deflection. From it being a tight game with Manchester United seeing more of the ball to ‘is this the end of him’. No talk of Liverpool or of United’s systematic failure to build an identity and credo. Just go to the knackered player and make it about him. I loved that.
I love going under the radar.
The facts sound harsh for them.
Man United couldn’t live with Liverpool. Furthermore, they couldn’t live with Liverpool at Old Trafford.
That’s a big deal. It’s a horrible place to go, the usual jokes aside, as its grandeur is genuinely impressive. It’s a place which puts you on the back foot immediately. The last thing you want to do is go to the home of your biggest rivals and be put on the back foot.
It’s understandable why we’ve baulked there so often in the past. We did it twice last season. What’s more, we did it twice to one of their poorest sides. That’s the power of the place.
Not Sunday, though. As with his first two games, Arne Slot’s Liverpool were all about control and trust. It was the equivalent of putting your hand on the forehead of a smaller man who’s taking empty swings at you with none of them landing. Have a corner, build some pressure, do your best. We’ll just take all this away from you in a minute.
It should have been 4-0 and Liverpool should sit on top of the league, but Dom, who may have played his best game in a year, got his legs wrong and fluffed his lines. Unprofessional? That’s harsh. I just think he didn’t believed what was happening and panicked.
No matter. Second will do for a fortnight. Make it about Manchester City instead just as they made it about Casemiro. Just let Arne do his work and leave us out of it.
The only real shock came after the game during the interviews and Mo Salah’s comment about this being his final year. After a huge win there it felt like having your Christmas presents taken off you on Boxing Day morning, but if anything it might be a good thing.
He clearly wants to talk to the club or rather, he wants the club to talk to him. He didn’t say anything about wanting to get off. That’s what I took from it. That and that it wasn’t a slip of the tongue. Not many players answer a question about their haircut with a discussion about a contract.
The club will have heard that and – what, with it being the international break – you’d hope they’re sitting down with Mo’s agent and a calculator soon. You’d hope, anyway.
I mean, why hasn’t it been done already?
Well, he’s 32 and the club would make a ton of cash if they let him go. Yeah, great.
FSG are famously risk-averse and don’t want to be lumped into knocking out a big expensive contract to a player who might turn into Casemiro in three months.
They’d also be idiots to even consider it.
The problem with late football careers is that you can never tell when it goes. Gary Neville often talks about a West Brom game when he got legged too often and called it a day.
I’ve just been reading Paul Merson’s brutally honest autobiography and he knew when the Championship and not the Premier League had become his level. Then he knew when even that was too much.
Does Mo Salah look like he’s anywhere near dropping his standards? Does he look like he’s stopped enjoying The Reds? Does he look like he’s happy with Gordon Hodgson being Liverpool’s third all-time goal scorer?
He’s just walked off the pitch at Old Trafford with his third goal of the season and two assists while laughing his arse off.
He doesn’t look like he’s going to cramp up walking down the stairs at any minute.
If you’ve got those players, you don’t mess around with their contracts. You don’t mess about with Kenny Dalglish and Ian Rush.
Mo Salah is this generation’s Kenny Dalglish and Ian Rush. That’s the highest compliment I can pay him. An absolute gold legend.
You don’t end his career here thinking you’ll just get another one. It’d be like replacing Shakespeare with Dan Brown because, technically, he’s in the same game.
Milk every second of Mo Salah, Liverpool. Milk every nanosecond, because every club in the world would want him.
We should too.
Don’t mess this up.
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Agree on Salah.
He absolutely needs a new contract. The club cannot mess this up.
Especially after the summer transfer window fluffed its lines