Arne Slot unsure if Mo Salah will play for Liverpool again following his critical interview | OneFootball

Arne Slot says he has yet to have a detailed conversation with Mo Salah about his outspoken interview following Liverpool’s draw with Leeds on Saturday.

Salah, who was left out of the starting line-up again for the game and did not come on as a substitute, told journalists afterwards that he felt as though he was being “thrown under the bus” following the side’s poor form this season, and said he no longer had a relationship with Arne Slot.

The Egyptian has not travelled to Milan for the Champions League clash against Inter and Slot says informing him of that has been the extent of their discussions since Saturday.

“We let him know that he’s not travelling with us,” Slot said. “The only conversation has been there, from us to him.

“Of course, before Saturday, the two of us have spoken a lot. Sometimes longer, sometimes shorter.”

Slot also says he did not feel as though the relationship between him and Salah was damaged, prior to Saturday.

“That’s not the way I feel but he has the right to feel how he feels,” Slot said. “I haven’t felt that at all until Saturday evening for sure.

“When you don’t play a player, usually they don’t like the manager that much but he was very respectful to my staff members, to his team-mates, and he trained really hard.

“To an extent, it was a surprise for me after the game when I heard he gave the comments he gave.

“But, as I said, it’s not the first and it’s not the last time that when a player doesn’t play, that he says something similar to what he did.

“But I think my reaction to that is also clear and that’s that he’s not here with us tonight.”

Asked if Salah could play against Brighton in their following game, which the forward also suggested could be his last game for the club, Slot replied: “We’re sitting here on an evening before a big game, a big fixture for us, Inter Milan, and there is now maybe only 36 hours between the moment we conceded the 3-3 against Leeds and the moment I’m sitting here now.

“I think you can understand that I’ve tried to prepare my team in the best possible way for the game tomorrow evening so the most thoughts I had are about tomorrow.

“In the meantime we’ve decided what I just said, not to take him with us to this game, and after tomorrow we will look at the situation again.

Salah expressed confusion as to why he had been left out of the starting 11 for three games in a row and explaining that decision, Slot continued: “I think we, as a team, struggled this season and already more and more last season with the game plans other teams had against us.

“So I am not only talking about the long ball style, which is something teams mainly do against us now.

“I have tried to come up with my solutions because that is my job. We have tried many things and we looked very vulnerable, in my opinion, after all the things I’ve tried against Forest and PSV.

“I decided to play with an extra midfielder in the game against West Ham. We won the game so I decided to do it one more time against Sunderland where at half-time, I brought him [Salah] in.

“Then against Leeds, we faced a 5-3-2 and I decided to play a 4-4-2 diamond if you want to talk about it like this with Hugo Ekitike a bit off the right side and Cody Gakpo a bit off the left and Florian Wirtz in between.

“I could have played Mo off the right but I decided to play Hugo.”

Asked if it could be Salah’s last game for the club, Slot added: “I have no clue. I cannot answer that question at this moment in time.

“I’m a firm believer that there is always a possibility to return for a player.”

Also mong Salah’s allegations were that he felt as though someone at Liverpool wanted him to leave the club.

“It’s difficult to know exactly what he means and why he says this and who he is referring to,” Slot said, addressing those comments.

“Usually I’m calm and polite but that doesn’t mean I’m weak.

“If a player has these comments about so many things then it is about me, us, as a club, to react and you can see now that he’s not here.”

“I should need to find out exactly why he said what he said.

“But then I have to guess a little bit. If it is only just because he doesn’t play then the answer to your question could be just play him every single time.

“But maybe that is not the reason why he said what he said, maybe there is something else why he has this opinion.

“But that, I don’t know. Is it about me not playing him? Then the answer could be what could I have done differently? Playing him. But maybe that is not the reason why he thinks and feels this way.

“He has every right to feel how he feels but he doesn’t have the right to share it with the media – well, he has the right, but then it’s up to us to react to it.”