Simon Jordan offered a balanced assessment of Liverpool’s troubles this term under Arne Slot.
The TalkSPORT pundit did note that the fanbase’s patience had appeared to run out, but was keen to highlight mitigating factors impacting the 2025/26 campaign.
One such factor being Mo Salah’s apparent drop-off in performance levels amid a public falling out with the head coach.
It has now been attested that Liverpool never fully ‘circled and squared’ the situation that saw Salah issue a public complaint
“The Salah situation was never circled and squared in terms of what happened in the dressing room to suggest that a player felt he could speak the way he did,” Jordan spoke on TalkSPORT.
“Seems to have just been brought back into a fold and is now a shadow of himself.
“There is no dispensation now for Slot about what was last year’s performances. The team are struggling on the field and are clearly not anywhere near where they were before.
“You’ve also got to factor in the nuance. They bought Isak, that’s turned out to be a disaster becuase it was protracted and now he’s injured; you had the tragedy of Jota; Luis Diaz was a key component of the Liverpool side and the way they played, wanted to go because he couldn’t get the deal he wanted; and Darwin Nunez was long overdue going.
“So, they’ve had to rebuild. And, of course, the rebuild hasn’t worked the way people anticipated. But he’s getting no latitude for it, and thay may be because Liverpool fans have been indulged with a fabulous brand of football from Klopp, and a more sophisticated extension of it by Slot.”
Whilst we appreciate that there are contributing factors to the decline Liverpool are experiencing this year, the simple fact of the matter is that this side should not be struggling to this extent with the quality available.
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Trailing the top four to an out-of-form Aston Villa and a half-baked but improved Manchester United side is simply not acceptable.
And it’s not like the quality of the football on show has been providing any single fan with a degree of faith that the results are coming.
Reports coming out of the club had suggested that Arne Slot had held a positive meeting with Mo Salah ahead of the club’s clash with Brighton back in December.
There were later indications that perhaps things weren’t absolutely back to normal between the pair. Certainly, our Egyptian King did not take well to his substitution against Nottingham Forest in February, though the former Roma man has generally found it difficult to come to terms with this throughout his stay at Anfield.
We’d argue the biggest problem with Salah at present is how he’s currently being utilised by the manager.
Sofascore’s heatmap of the 33-year-old’s Premier League season compared to last term would appear to indicate that he’s spending less time inside the opposition box.
* Mo Salah’s Premier League heatmap for the 2025/26 season
* Mo Salah’s Premier League heatmap for the 2024/25 season
Salah is still registering an impressive number of touches per 90 inside the opposition box (7.81) in the Premier League – but this has drastically collapsed from his 2024/25 average per 90 (10.5), according to Fotmob.
At 33 years of age, and steadily approaching 34, that has to be put down in large part to a loss of explosive pace.
But it’s up to Arne Slot to fix this and get his right winger closer to the box where he’s most impactful.
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