Arne Slot, Liverpool sack verdict comes in as former star names manager’s biggest problem after Salah – Exclusive | OneFootball

Liverpool boss Arne Slot has been told he is “quite safe” from the sack at Anfield despite the club’s questionable form this season and, as the club prepare for another vital clash against Brighton on Saturday, John Arne Riise has exclusively revealed the biggest reason for the Reds’ poor form this season.

The Premier League champions have suffered an alarming fall from grace this season. While Liverpool won all seven of their first matches of the season, a remarkable drop-off saw them lose nine of their next 12 games, leaving them way off the pace in the title race and facing a battle to reach the next phase of the Champions League.

While Tuesday’s impressive 1-0 win over Inter Milan now means they are unbeaten in four games and gets them very much back on track in Europe, such is the delicate nature of Slot‘s position, that a loss to Brighton on Saturday will place his future in serious new peril and amid reports he is already facing a battle to avoid the sack.

Slot’s situation has not been helped by the enormous storm engulfing their biggest name player, Mo Salah, who last weekend waged war on the Reds by suggesting he has been “thrown under a bus” and that someone inside the club wants him gone.

Off the back of that statement, Salah was excluded from the squad that travelled to Italy, while a trusted source has since revealed that his motives behind the comments were aimed solely at either forcing his exit, or backing the club into a corner in sacking Slot.

However, former Reds star Riise has told TEAMtalk that FSG are not planning a change of manager and believes that Slot has enough credit in the bank to survive the crisis.

“It’s the first time the team has really struggled under him, and I think the club wants to see how the players and the manager react,” Riise told us, in association with FootItalia.

“Of course, there is always pressure at a big club like Liverpool, and what they did last season was incredible.

“With the amount of money they spent in the summer, they need time for the new players to adapt. He’ll get time to integrate these new players he wanted, but the results will need to improve quickly for him to get that time.

“I’m not thinking about other candidates, and I doubt the club are seriously looking yet. For now, Arne Slot is quite safe!”

Riise feels Liverpool are currently in one of those awkward runs where everything that can go wrong is going wrong, pinpointing last Saturday’s 3-3 draw at Leeds, where the Whites scored three times from five shots on target, as a prime example.

“I was so frustrated by the game against Leeds because they [Leeds] were underperforming, and it should have been easy to win from 2-0 up.

“But they [Liverpool] made a silly mistake with the penalty, and it seems like everything just goes wrong at the same time these days.

Asked specifically why it is not working out for the manager, Riise replied: “I think Arne is struggling to put out the best eleven for every game he wants to play and that lack of consistency is a massive factor.

“I’m not quite sure how many injuries we’re dealing with at the moment, and I don’t know what’s going on at the club right now. You see Mo Salah after the game, he had an outburst as well, so it’s hard to really understand what’s going on.

“I think Arne Slot would definitely want to have his best XI out on the pitch, more consistently than he’s managed recently.”

However, on the subject of Salah, the situation may well be far more bleak than it would appear after we exclusively revealed Salah’s camp are ready to ask Liverpool to come to a mutual termination over his contract, potentially as soon as January, while a mind-blowing offer is soon expected to land on the Egyptian’s doorstep.

Meanwhile, Salah has taken another step towards that alleged move to Saudi Arabia after meeting what a report describes as a ‘secret London rendezvous’ with his former Reds teammate, Jordan Henderson.

In that meeting, at an upmarket Italian restaurant, it is reported that the pair entered both wearing masks to disguise their identities.

But inside, the paper managed to obtain a series of photos of the pair in discussion, where the paper presumes were discussing what life is like in Saudi Arabia.

Elsewhere, Bayern Munich are planning a major move to snatch Marc Guehi out from Liverpool’s clutches, and sources close to both the Crystal Palace star and the Reds believe they know what the final outcome will be.