Liverpool legend John Aldridge thinks Jurgen Klopp needs to drop Mo Salah after the Reds’ recent disappointing performances.
The Reds are way off the pace in the Premier League after their 3-2 loss to Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday.
Liverpool more than matched Arsenal in the first half but found themselves 2-1 down at the break before Bukayo Saka cancelled out Roberto Firmino’s second-half equaliser to give the Gunners a deserved win.
It will be the second-half performance that will be of particular concern to Klopp and his coaching staff as they looked second best all over the park.
Salah was anonymous for most of the game and was hauled off in the 69th minute for Fabinho with the Egypt international managing just two Premier League goals in eight matches this season.
The forward has set high standards for himself at Liverpool after scoring 120 goals in 188 matches for the Reds since joining from Roma in 2017.
But now Liverpool legend Aldridge reckons Klopp now must consider dropping Salah after his recent quiet spell.
Aldridge wrote in the Liverpool Echo: “I’m one of Mo Salah’s biggest fans but he needs to be dropped. He needs to be left out because he’s not doing himself justice and he’s not doing the team justice.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re Mo Salah, Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. At that stage you’ve got to be left out for your own good. Whether Klopp can actually do that now that Diaz is injured, I don’t know.
“Mo’s not the only one, don’t get me wrong. There are so many players below form and they have been for a while. The manager’s trying to get them to play through it. It’s very loyal but he doesn’t really have many alternatives.
“You can’t play games like the last two games, they’ve needed four goals to win. They should have won with three goals against Brighton, they should have drawn with Arsenal.
“They’ve given themselves too much to do time and time again. You can’t play games, as good as they are going forward, you can’t be playing games where you need three or four goals to get a result.
“No clean sheets in the league for a while, since Everton. And that should have been two or three-all. It’s worrying, of course it’s worrying. We’re slowly becoming the new Man Utd. That’s not right, that’s not Liverpool.
“The four players upfront, and you can include Bobby in that, are all fantastic players. They can work but to make it work, you need to have a real holding midfielder in the midfield two who can get across and get the tackles in.
“Fabinho ’s the one but he’s not been playing well this year. Can Hendo do that? He’s a creative midfielder for me, like Thiago. They’re creative. You need someone who can really defend and shield your defenders.
“It’s not ideal to have Hendo and Thiago there together because it’s not in their DNA. They can do a good job, don’t get me wrong. But their job is different to what we need when you’re going to play four front lads up.
“You need to play at least one proper defensive midfielder. Maybe two on some occasions. Fabinho has to play against City. You have to have defensive players on the pitch who can do a job.
“Klopp might have to go back, with the injury of Diaz, and revert to 4-3-3 but we’ll have to see. With Diaz out, the front three is going to be Jota, Nunez or Bobby and then Mo. They haven’t got another right-winger, the only other one is Jota who can play out there, who’s going to get you goals really. That’s where we are at the moment.
“You look at our set-up, a lot of people will say we should be playing wing-backs. We’ve got one of the best managers in the world and we’ve just got to stick behind him and trust what he says and thinks. It’s all about opinions.”
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