Mohamed Salah was left out of Liverpool’s starting lineup against Crystal Palace at the weekend, and that led to concerns among some fans.
Some Liverpool supporters felt that manager Jurgen Klopp had omitted the Egypt international forward from the starting lineup in the Premier League game at Selhurst Park in London on Saturday as punishment for recent comments on his future.
The 28-year-old – who has been on the books of Liverpool since the summer of 2017 when he joined from AS Roma for a transfer fee reported by BBC Sport to be worth £34 million – suggested to AS last week that he is open to playing for Real Madrid or Barcelona, and added that his future is in the hands of the Reds.
Some Liverpool fans were understandably concerned, and Klopp leaving the former Chelsea attacker out of the starting lineup against Palace added to their worries.
However, Klopp seems to have allayed those concerns, explaining just why he did not include Salah from the start.
Klopp told Liverpool’s official website: “It’s just the first time for a while that we have the opportunity to do something like this. We played Sunday-Wednesday, so we needed fresh legs today.
“So Joel could come in, Naby could come in and then we had to think about how we can deal with that in the first line and Mo played the last four games, so a massively intense period. So it was clear it will be him.
“Then usually you would expect in a game like this against Crystal Palace – the result recents between us and them were always pretty tight – so bringing him in the last half an hour, I thought it’s a good idea. We did that, by the way, but it was not exactly the scenario we would have expected, of course. That’s it.”
Making an impact
Salah may not have started against Palace, but the former Roma star did come on as a substitute in the 57th minute.
The Egypt international forward scored two goals late on to take his tally to 13 in the league for the season so far, according to WhoScored.
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