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Journalism of Courage
Liverpool coach Arne Slot has raised a few eyebrows with his decision to leave out talismanic star Mo Salah from the starting lineup to play West Ham on Sunday. While Salah’s form this season has been topsy-turvy at best, Salah has established himself as a legend at Anfield. Only last season, he was the club’s leading goalscorer as Liverpool managed to seal a record-equaling 20th English league title.
With Salah named on the bench for Sunday’s clash, Slot picked a forward line of Alexander Isak, Florian Wirtz and Cody Gakpo for the game at the London Stadium. Salah’s form in recent games has seen him failing to score in his last four games and managed only four goals in the league all season.
Liverpool’s season has spiraled so far, the club is currently on a run of nine losses in 12 games in all competitions. It has lost six of its last seven in the league.
After Liverpool slumped to a 4-1 defeat to PSV Eindhoven in the Champions League earlier this week, coach Slot had spoken about the additional pressure that the club was under.
“There’s a lot of pressure if you work or play at a top club and even more so if you start losing more games than this club, or these players or this manager, is used to. So then there’s always pressure,” said the Liverpool coach.
“But there was a lot of pressure last season as well for us to win the league and now it’s a different kind of pressure because we’ve lost so many games.”
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What has also added to the pressure on Liverpool has been that right after winning the title last season, they forked out around $500 million (377 million pounds) in the offseason on star players like Alexander Isak and Florian Wirtz.
“We fight on and we try to improve. That’s what we all try,” Slot said. “In the end it’s about doing what this club is about, keep fighting and no matter how difficult it is, we have to fight together.”
