Liverpool legend is right with Mo Salah comments but it's easier said than done

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Talking to Emile Heskey the other day, he was explaining how older professional players know when time is catching up with them. It was fascinating.

You don’t feel much different, you still feel you could run through brick walls, but you start noticing small things. You are stretching for balls that your feet would normally have under quick control. You get to places a micro-second slower than you have done throughout your career. And at first, only the player knows what is happening. Time is catching up.

Mo Salah has had, by his standards, an indifferent start to this Premier League and Champions League campaign. But, to any rational observer, there can still be no suggestion it is some sort of irreversible decline. He will be back with a bang.

But when John Aldridge says Salah should not be back for the game against Sunderland at Anfield on Wednesday night, he is spot-on.

“Even if you are Pele, Diego Maradona, Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo, if you’re not playing well then … on occasion, you need to be dropped,” said Aldridge. “It’s why I’d like to see Salah remain on the bench against Sunderland and I’d like to think when he does play again, he’ll be fired up to prove Arne Slot wrong.”

Leaving aside the idea that Salah has to prove anything to anyone, it is perfectly understandable that Aldridge would like to see the Egyptian unable to make Slot’s next starting line-up. But if the Liverpool manager does go down that road, it will be for two reasons.

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One, the Liverpool team he sent out at West Ham looked nicely balanced and performed well. And two, whether he likes it or not, Salah is surely going to need his game-time managed to some extent.

He won’t like it, for sure. But after the workload of a professional career that has spanned 16 years and almost 800 appearances for club and country, even the remarkably robust and durable Salah cannot go on producing his best form and athleticism every three or four days of a nine-month club season.

And rather than one-game breaks, perhaps longer periods of rest will be needed, especially when you consider his continuing commitments to his country. Aldridge added: “I am fully convinced he will have a part to play in the coming games before he heads off to the Africa Cup of Nations.”

He probably will. But an extended spell of battery-recharging might be no bad thing for Salah.

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This is going to be a managerial challenge for Slot, make no mistake. He might think - with justification - that the best plan is to give Salah a break, let him go and enjoy his time at AFCON and come back rejuvenated for the second half of the season.

But good luck trying to convince Salah that he signed a new two-year deal to sit on the bench for Premier League home games against Sunderland. Yes, Aldridge is right.

Keeping Salah as a substitute is the right thing for a Liverpool manager to do at the moment. But for Slot, and all things considered, it will be easier said than done.

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