Liverpool urged to drop Mo Salah for somebody much taller

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·11 novembre 2025

Liverpool urged to drop Mo Salah for somebody much taller

Liverpool manager Arne Slot stands accused of a ‘very obvious, big‑ticket managerial mistake’ by not dropping Mo Salah.

Who should play instead? Somebody much taller. Maybe Rhys Williams?

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Liverpool should drop Mo Salah for…

It’s a compelling argument that Arne Slot should just drop Mo Salah (it is ‘a mistake so obvious, so clear in its outlines, that it is tempting to cast around for some deeper motivation’, apparently) and The Guardian‘s Barney Ronay makes it well, if you ignore the typically self-indulgent intro about Dalai Lama. And we really do try.

But we cannot help but think that something is missing here: An alternative. Not once in 1369 words in which Ronay argues at length that this is a ‘very obvious, big‑ticket managerial mistake’ does he offer another option for Slot to play on the right side of the attack.

Why is Slot playing Mohamed Salah in every game? Why is Slot continuing to do this even when the evidence is clear that this is a mistake?

We’re just hazarding a guess here but we think it might be because Salah is still Liverpool’s top scorer and top assist-provider in the Premier League even in a sh*t season. Could it be that?

Also, he isn’t playing him every game, but we’re not seeing anybody advocate for Jeremie Frimpong to reprise his role from the 1-0 defeat to Galatasaray? Certainly not Ronay, who never mentions him or Florian Wirtz – who played there against Eintracht Frankfurt – as alternatives to Salah.

Since their last trip to the Etihad Stadium in February, when Salah was brilliantly decisive, Liverpool have played 11 games against City, Newcastle, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain, losing seven of them. Salah has played in all of these, contributed zero goals and performed most of the time like a Salah-shaped void, a ghost at the edge of things.

He did literally make the winner for Liverpool at Newcastle United, has scored against both Tottenham and Aston Villa in that spell and claimed a goal and assist in the win over Atletico Madrid (decent), but whatever. He’s clearly rubbish and should be dropped for…somebody taller, it seems.

Liverpool have gone from being more intense than their opponents, from intensity as a baseline and non-negotiable, to fielding three very small men in Salah, Florian Wirtz and the current version of Alexis Mac Allister.

We are pretty sure that Mac Allister has not physically shrunk since last season. But at least we now know the problem with naming any alternative to Salah: Wirtz and Federico Chiesa are also only 5’9″ and Frimpong is even smaller.

There’s only one thing for it: Rhys Williams on the wing.

Just wait until Ronay works out that Liverpool were battered by Manchester City despite the opposition fielding Phil Foden (5′ 7″), Bernardo Silva (5’7″) and Jeremy Doku (5’8″). That’s ‘three very small men’ right there.

In the opening minutes against City there was the spectacle of Wirtz chasing Jérémy Doku down City’s left flank, grabbing and grappling at his back while Doku seemed vaguely aware of being tapped on the shoulder.

According to official measurements, Doku is shorter and lighter than Wirtz but carry on…

It is important to note that none of this really Salah’s fault. He is not doing anything different. He has never been a defensive player, something that didn’t matter when he was flanked by a furiously hungry three-man midfield.

It’s the same three-man midfield as last season, in the main. What has changed, and once again Ronay is damned by omission here, is that he no longer has Trent Alexander-Arnold behind him. Surely that was worth a mention in a piece about the decline of last season’s Premier League top scorer and player of the year?

He’s also 33 years old, quite small, and a veteran of more than 700 career games. What was everyone expecting to happen here?

He was pretty small before. This is getting weird now. And also, he is only 33, which is not much older than 32. And as Roney himself wrote about Salah way, way back in April: ‘Salah isn’t even very old. It might seem as though he has been around for ever, 10 years since he was skittering down the Chelsea right, peak malevolent José Mourinho up there taking bites on his touchline, but Salah is 32, not 35.

‘Luka Modric won the Ballon d’Or at 33. Robert Lewandowski, who like Salah treats his body like a nutritional experiment, who also looks like a renaissance anatomical drawing with his shirt off, is leading a brilliant young Barcelona team at 36 years old.’

Just a few months later, Salah is ancient and now unforgivably small.

Slot has made this into a major problem by refusing to drop his star player, hobbling his own rebuild in the process. It is a mistake so obvious, so clear in its outlines, that it is tempting to cast around for some deeper motivation.

And yet not tempting to cast around for an alternative.

So many (more) years of hurt for England at World Cup

‘Thomas Tuchel’s World Cup plans in the balance as England injury issues pile up’ – Mirror.

With injuries to a third-choice goalkeeper, a winger and a back-up centre-half for inconsequential qualifiers in November, is there really any point in England going to the World Cup in June?