Arne Slot hasn't fixed his Mohamed Salah problem, the THREE big-name stars who risk World Cup axeing - and why Match of the Day needs a history lesson: IAN LADYMAN on My Premier League Weekend

A good afternoon for Liverpool quietened down the drama surrounding Mo Salah but the truth is that it’s a problem that has not gone away.

Much was made of the positive reception Salah received from the Liverpool fans against Brighton but that was always going to be the case. The Anfield fanbase want their best ever attacking player to stay.

But can he? Will he?

If Salah returns from the Africa Cup of Nations after Christmas and doesn’t get straight back into Arne Slot ’s team then the chances are that we will be back where we started.

‘If there are other reasons people want to carry on talking about this then that’s fine,’ said Slot after his team’s 2-0 win and if that was a comment designed to suggest that there are some malignant external forces driving this subject then it was misguided.

There aren't. The bones of it remain simple to explain but much harder to solve.

Mohamed Salah bagged an assist against Brighton but Liverpool's problem has not gone away

If Arne Slot does not select him immediately after AFCON, we'll be back where we started

Salah needs to feel central to everything Slot does and says and if he doesn’t feel that then we know how it’s likely to end. An hour off the bench against Brighton – handed to Salah after Joe Gomez’s injury – felt adequate on Saturday but he will need more of that going forward.

This a situation characterised by division. Salah versus Slot. Jamie Carragher versus the Liverpool dressing room. But the fundamentals of it are very straight forward. Carragher may have turned in to the lightening rod when it comes to criticism of parts of the media on this one, but the truth is that he is not the only ex-pro to see what is obvious.

Asked on Match of the Day on Saturday if this the Salah problem was over, Alan Shearer and Danny Murphy were in agreement. No.

Liverpool’s creativity continues to be a problem but they do at least have someone to put the chances away when they come and Hugo Ekitike is so far showing himself to be the pick of the centre forwards bought across the Premier League in the summer.

Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Newcastle spent in the region of £470m on seven through the middle strikers in the summer and they have so far produced 23 goals between them of which Ekitike has scored seven.

Only Chelsea’s Liam Delap is yet to register at all in the league and the £30m signing from Ipswich is currently injured. Ekitike’s team-mate Alexander Isak (£125m) has scored once in the league while at United Benjamin Sesko has managed just two.

And what of Arsenal’s Viktor Gyokeres?

Mikel Arteta’s team delivered 30 crosses as they squeezed out Wolves at the death at the Emirates.

Any chance Gyokeres can try and head one of them in? He is 6ft 2.

Hugo Ekitike is the best forward summer signing across the Premier League this season

Arteta’s team selection on Saturday served to indicate again just how tough young Myles Lewis-Skelly is finding things at the moment.

Arsenal are stretched across the back because of injuries and have now lost Ben White, another defensive player.

Still, though, Lewis-Skelly can’t make Arteta’s Premier League starting eleven. On this occasion, in the absence of Riccardo Calafiori, the Arsenal manager asked Piero Hincapie to shuffle across from the central defensive position he had occupied against Aston Villa a week earlier.

Lewis-Skelly - still only 19 - did play in the Champions League win at Bruges last midweek but after starting fifteen Premier League matches in his breakthrough year last time, he is yet to make the eleven for a single one this time.

Myles Lewis-Skelly is still struggling to get into Mikel Arteta's starting XI - and that bodes poorly for his England hopes

England manager Thomas Tuchel remains a huge fan of Lewis-Skelly and if he starts to play regularly in the second half of the season, he still has a very good chance of making the World Cup squad.

Elsewhere this weekend the scale of Tuchel’s dilemma in terms of the number ten position became very clear as Morgan Rogers, Cole Palmer and Phil Foden all contributed goals and performances of note.

My colleague Jack Gaughan’s piece last week on the factors behind Foden’s return to form was fascinating and the Manchester City star is now playing with a freedom that was beyond him last season.

At the moment the player struggling to make the plane to America is Palmer. He said himself on Saturday after Chelsea beat Everton that his troublesome groin still isn’t right.

As it stands, Foden, Rogers and Jude Bellingham will all be in the squad with Aston Villa star Rogers the player in possession of the shirt.

His two goals as Villa beat West Ham on Sunday bore the hallmarks of confidence and the fact he scores at important moments will not have escaped Tuchel’s attention.

Of the nine goals Rogers has scored for Villa away from home in the Premier League, all of them have either been to draw Villa level in a game or give them the lead. There is no decoration about what this guy does.

Cole Palmer will struggle to make the plane to the USA due to the depth of talent England have

Villa’s charge up the Premier League table has been incredible, particularly given they didn’t spend heavily in the summer and then lost Monchi, their sporting director.

With loan signings Harvey Elliott – one Premier League start – and Jadon Sancho – no Premier League starts – having no kind of impact, it seemed that free transfer Victor Lindelof was heading the same way.

But the former Manchester United defender – one of the nicest lads in football – made a rare start on Sunday and even provided an assist for one of Rogers’ goals.

Victor Lindelof provided an assist on a rare star for Aston Villa to prove his value

Newcastle in green, Tottenham in yellow, Leeds in Blue, Brighton in lilac – and on it went. Not a single away team in the Premier League wore their first choice colours this weekend – even though only Everton (at Chelsea) and Aston Villa (at West Ham) actually had to change to avoid a clash.

Ah yes, it’s Christmas. Time to get the tills ringing. It’s not only FIFA who do exploitation well.

Every away team stayed away from their first-choice colours, though many could have avoided kit clashes

Those who say that only locally born players can feel what a derby game really means should have been at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light on Sunday.

There were only two north-east born players on show – Newcastle’s Lewis Miley and Dan Burn – but that didn’t dampen the atmosphere around the first meeting of the two teams in the Premier League for a decade.

Sunderland fans were also quick to spot journalists who they associate with coverage of their rivals as they made their way up to the press box at the back of the Main Stand before kick-off.

‘Saudi apologists’ was the reference of choice with a smattering of profanity attached.

The only person apologising at full-time, meanwhile, was Eddie Howe. His Newcastle team continue to puzzle everybody who watches them this season.

That was the best atmosphere of my season so far, by the way. The worst? West Ham at home to Liverpool by a distance. That stadium is just wrong on so many levels.

Eddie Howe was the only one apologising after Newcastle's defeat by Sunderland

With Sunderland’s winning goal coming from the head of Newcastle striker Nick Woltemade, the German was at least in decent company this weekend.

Ahead of tonight’s game at Old Trafford between Manchester United and Bournemouth, there have been four own goals across nine Premier League games.

Since 2006-07, only one top flight round of fixtures has had more. There were six on a mid-October weekend of the 2014-15 season and amazingly they were spread over just two games.

Sunderland were on the wrong end of it on Saturday October 18 as Santiago Vergini, Liam Bridcutt and Patrick van Aanholt all managed to score in their own net as the Black Cats lost 8-0 at Southampton.

The following day, meanwhile, Liverpool won 3-2 at QPR with Steven Gerrard’s OG being more than matched by Richard Dunne and Steven Caulker for the home team.

Nick Woltemade wasn't the only man to score an own goal this weekend - three others did

If Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca thought he was playing some kind of cute game after the win over Everton by expressing unhappiness about the worst 48 hours of his time at the club then he is wrong. All he has done is exhibit a naivety about how the media works.

Maresca may have intended his remark to send some kind of subliminal message to the club’s owners or indeed his players. But by refusing to elaborate, all he has done is allow speculation to dominate and now the issue will linger and be returned to every time his team plays badly.

If a manager wants to fire shots, he must be prepared to follow them up. You can’t just fire and run and expect the conversation to end there just because you want it to.

This issue will now follow Maresca until he gets well and truly tired of it and he has only himself to blame. It represents a serious mistake. Not many managers play hardball with the powers that be at Chelsea and survive to laugh about it later.

Enzo Maresca's recent outburst was a mistake and it is the sort of thing that ends badly

Meanwhile, it was surprising to see the BBC join the ‘football only started when the Premier League began’ gang on Saturday night.

MOTD’s stats around the Tyne-Wear derby were limited to the modern era. Sunderland have won ten and Newcastle nine of the 29 Premier League games, they told us.

Historically the picture is actually fascinating. Yesterday’s win for Regis le Bris’ team means that after facing each other 157 times, the teams have now won 54 games each.

Match of the Day missed the big picture with their coverage of the Tyne-Wear derby

Brighton have won consecutive Premier League games only once this season and must break coach Fabian Hurzeler’s dismal December record if that is to change any time soon.

The young German’s record in the final month of the year is P9 L4 D5 W0. At least Brighton have a chance at home next weekend against Sunderland team who are about to lose SIX players to the Africa Cup of Nations.

Fabian Hurzeler has a dismal December record - he is yet to win in the final month of the year

Djed Spence is finding discipline a problem - as Thomas Tuchel has said, he needs to behave like an England player

What we make of Tottenham is almost impossible to say but next Saturday’s home game with Liverpool feels as though it could be huge already.

Thomas Frank found it hard to keep a lid on his emotions after his team’s surrender at Nottingham Forest and player discipline is something that continues to be a problem for the Dane.

Djed Spence – already in the headlines for ignoring his manager at the end of a home defeat to Chelsea – was at it again on Sunday, reacting petulantly after being substituted.

Asked about Spence before England’s game in Albania recently, coach Thomas Tuchel did not duck the issue.

‘You have to behave like an England player at all times,’ said Tuchel.

Spence would appear to be on thin ice with club and with country.