Liverpool boss Arne Slot left Mohamed Salah on the bench during the weekend win over West Ham after a disappointing season so far from the Egyptian star
Mohamed Salah of Liverpool
Mohamed Salah was a substitute for Liverpool at the weekend(Image: Richard Martin-Roberts - CameraSport, CameraSport via Getty Images)
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I met up with Emile Heskey the other day and he was fascinating talking about how older professional players know when time is catching up with them. He said that you don’t feel much different and you still feel you could run through brick walls, but you start noticing small things.
You start stretching to control balls that you wouldn't have needed to stretch for before. You're a micro-second slower than you have been during your career.
At first, it's only you that notices. No-one else will see it. But it's clear what's happening. Time is catching up with you.
Which brings us to Mo Salah. This season he has had, it's fair to say, an indifferent start to his Premier League and Champions League campaigns. However, you'd be foolish to suggest that Liverpool's Egyptian king, despite now being 33, is in some sort of irreversible decline.
The smart money is on him being back with a bang, sooner rather than later.
However, when John Aldridge says Salah should not be back for the game against Sunderland, he's very much on the money.
“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.”
After the recent concerning run of form for both Salah and the team, and the weekend win at West Ham, it is perfectly understandable that Aldridge would like to see Slot continue with him out of the starting line-up on Wednesday night.
But if the Liverpool manager does go down that road, it will be for two reasons.
One, the Liverpool team he sent out at West Ham looked nicely balanced and performed well. And two, whether Salah likes it or not, he too needs his game-time managed to some extent.
Mohamed Salah
Arne Slot faces a major selection dilemma around Mohamed Salah ahead of the Sunderland game
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Sure he won't like it. He'll hate it to be honest. But after the workload of a professional career that has spanned 16 years and almost 800 appearances for club and country, even Salah - a player who looks after himself better than all but the top 0.0001% - cannot go on producing his best every three or four days without needs some sort of break.
And, rather than one-game breaks, perhaps longer periods of rest will be needed - especially when you consider his continuing commitment 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 almost certainly will. But, an extended spell on the sidelines, recharging his battery, might not be a bad thing for Salah right now.
For Slot, make no mistake, this is a big managerial challenge. He may well think that the best plan is to give Salah a break, let him go to AFCON and then come back ready and raring to go for the challenges of the second half of the season.
But convincing Salah that he should be kept to a watching brief and that he signed a new contract to sit on the bench for Premier League home games against Sunderland? Good luck with that one.
Aldridge is right, keeping Salah as a substitute is the right thing at the moment. But it's not going to be easy for Slot to do just that.