There are two things that don’t sit right with me at all: the way the club have handled the situation around Salah, and the way we’ve set up tactically that seems to blunt him on the pitch. Both feel connected in their own way, because he’s still the main man in this side.

Silence Around Salah And Club Communication

What really bothers me is the idea that Liverpool were listening to offers for Salah without him being properly in the loop. Why are we entertaining bids and conversations behind the scenes before we’ve had a proper sit-down with him and his team?

Why not wait until August, get everyone in a room, and hash it all out first? If Salah is saying there has been no real communication with the club or the manager, that should ring alarm bells. Instead, it feels like a lot of people just brushed that aside because he spoke publicly.

For me, that public statement almost gave the club cover in the media: people could point at what he said, twist it a bit, and the focus shifted away from whether we’d actually handled things properly in the first place. That’s the bit that sticks. It might be business, but it still needed to be addressed clearly and respectfully, and it never really felt like it was.

Salah’s Role And An Attack That Feels Shackled

On the pitch, the tactical side is just as troubling. Early on we had the wingers hugging the touchline with the fullbacks underlapping inside. You can see the idea, but it really limits Salah. He’s at his best when he’s closer to goal, with an overlapping fullback dragging defenders away and giving him space to cut inside or combine.

Last season showed that clearly. Our wide players were getting goals and Salah was leading the charge. There was a rhythm to it: the press was sharper, the fullbacks joined in at the right moments, and he was constantly in dangerous central areas.

Now it feels like we’ve gone away from that. The pressing isn’t as consistent, the wide players are wider for the sake of it, and Salah ends up isolated far from goal too often. When we’ve used the diamond, it hasn’t really helped either. Against Inter it just didn’t look right offensively: the connections weren’t there, the movements didn’t complement each other, and we never looked truly dangerous for long spells.

Truth is, if you’re building an attacking plan for this Liverpool side, it still has to be built around getting Salah into the right areas, with the right support. At the moment, both the communication off the pitch and the structure on it feel a bit off, and that’s exactly why so many of us are uneasy about the whole situation.

Written by OliRed: 14 December 2025

Tags: tactics efl transfers