Jamie Carragher has said that the timing of Mo Salah’s announcement that he’ll leave Liverpool in the summer was ‘perfect and clever’.
On Tuesday evening, the 33-year-old took to social media to confirm that he’ll conclude his nine-year association with the Reds at the end of this season, with the Egyptian choosing to forego the final 12 months of his contract at Anfield.
There’s been an outpouring of heartfelt appreciation and admiration towards the winger since he made his decision public, and although he’ll depart at the end of a bitterly disappointing campaign for LFC, Carragher feels that the timing of his exit ultimately feels right.
The former Liverpool defender wrote in his column for The Telegraph: ‘The timing of Tuesday’s announcement strikes me as both perfect and clever. There will, inevitably, be retrospective suggestions that the decision is a year too late, and that it would have been better for all parties had he sought his farewell when the club won the Premier League trophy last May.
‘However, no-one was saying that this time last year, when Salah was winning the PFA and football writers’ player of the year awards. It was virtually impossible for the Liverpool hierarchy to ignore his numbers and his remarkable fitness levels, and attempt to persuade him and the fanbase that it was the right time to leave.
‘The new contract at that time kicked the can down the road, setting the stage for the inevitable moment when the one thing Salah could never outpace – time – finally caught up with him.’
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Carragher is quite right – having scored 34 goals last season and fired Liverpool to Premier League glory, an exit from the club last May would’ve seen him go out on a high, but there also would’ve been a feeling that he was leaving too early.
There won’t be a trophy to accompany his send-off unless the Reds go all the way in the Champions League, but with the Egyptian’s output diminishing rapidly in recent months, we’re seeing the first signs that he won’t again recapture the stratospheric levels he hit for so many years.
By announcing his departure from the club now, he’s ensured that he’ll be granted a bombastic and poignant farewell at Anfield in two months’ time. Even if he doesn’t add to his goal tally from here and LFC’s results remain horribly inconsistent, he’ll be guaranteed an outpouring of love from Kopites.
When Salah signed a new contract last April whilst enjoying an exceptional season, it was greeted with euphoria from Liverpool fans worldwide, and the prevailing view externally was that sporting director Richard Hughes had worked a masterclass by brokering a two-year extension for the winger.
Whatever might happen on the pitch between now and the end of May – for the player and the team – he will most certainly get a raucous send-off at Anfield when we host Brentford in his last Premier League game.
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