Steven Gerrard has said he was ‘surprised’ with the timing of Mo Salah’s social media statement in which the Liverpool winger seemed to fire a veiled swipe at Arne Slot.
Off the back of a woeful defeat away to Aston Villa on Friday, the Egyptian took to X and Instagram yesterday with an impassioned commentary in which he expressed a desire for the Reds to go back to the ‘heavy metal’ style of football which was synonymous with Jurgen Klopp.
While the statement didn’t mention the current head coach directly, it’s impossible to escape the connotations that it was intended as a criticism of how standards under the Dutchman have fallen off a cliff over the past few months.
Gerrard was asked about Salah’s comments on punditry duty for TNT Sports on Saturday, and he was struck by the timing of the winger’s public post, the weekend before he’s due to play his final match for Liverpool after nine glorious years at Anfield.
The former Reds captain said: “Mo Salah doesn’t really speak much, and he doesn’t tweet, and he certainly doesn’t tweet like that.
“I think he’s sending a message to the outside that things in that Liverpool dressing room are not right. The identity’s gone and it’s really hurting him to see it in front of his own eyes.
“I’m surprised at the timing with one game to go, his last game for Liverpool. He very rarely speaks. He’s done interviews lately because he’s obviously bringing the curtain down on an incredible career.
“That is quite damning to the Liverpool manager and his staff in terms of where this team’s at. That’s my opinion on that.”
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Salah became notorious for the rarity with which he spoke to reporters in the mixed zone throughout his time with Liverpool, and on the sporadic instances that it did happen, his words have tended to cause more than a few tremors.
After seeming to clash with Klopp on the touchline during a 2-2 draw at West Ham in 2024, the Egyptian infamously said that there would be ‘fire’ if he spoke to the press about that incident. A few months later, amid uncertainty over his contract situation, he professed after a win at Southampton that he was ‘more out than in‘, though he eventually signed a new deal later in the season.
Last December, there were clear signs of a fractured relationship with Slot after he claimed to have been ‘thrown under the bus’ at a time when he was dropped for three consecutive games amid an unusually barren run of form.
As Gerrard hinted, Salah seems to have become more uninhibited with his public proclamations now that he knows he’ll be leaving Liverpool at the end of the current campaign, with the 33-year-old sure to be given a poignant send-off after the home game against Brentford next Sunday.
The Egyptian was one of the standard bearers of a Reds team which scaled extraordinary heights under Klopp, with the peak of the German’s era now seeming frightfully distant amid the depressing malaise which has set in this season.
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