MO SALAH AND JORDAN HENDERSON: FORGOTTEN WISDOM?

"Hendo said the truth. That's how it was. We had talks, I told him I wanted him to stay but we talked about maybe not playing regularly.”

"I cannot tell a player they can have 50 games because I don't know that. In our relationship, I thought it was important we speak about 'what happens if'. Hendo, I love him but he was not great when they didn't play, [James] Milner and Lucas [Leiva] were the same. So we talk about that now."

They were the words of Jurgen Klopp in the aftermath of it being announced that the Liverpool captain, Jordan Henderson, had decided to leave the club after being told he might no longer be selected regularly in the starting line-up.

I’ve been thinking about those words over the past few days, since Mohamed Salah decided to throw a hand grenade into a house that was already on fire.

We’ve all had a chance to reflect on what Salah decided to do after another disastrous ending to a game, this time away to Leeds United.

As is always the case, since then the internet has showed us the whole array of opinions held by Liverpool fans - and bots - from all over the world.

There are those who have sympathy with the club legend for the way he’s been treated, thinking this should be the last nail in the manager’s coffin, and those who think what he’s done is an absolute disgrace meaning he should never wear the Liverpool shirt again, with every view point in between represented.

As is often the case, I have competing personas inside my head arguing the various sides. To be honest it can be exhausting trying to see every opinion, but after years of hard work I’ve got the voices well trained to the point where I can ask each of them to give their thoughts without keeping me awake all night like they used to.

Before getting into anything else, it’s important to say that the views I shared a couple of weeks ago about the death of Diogo Jota being the one crucial factor underpinning everything else that’s going wrong at the club this season applies to this case as well.

(You can read those thoughts here if you haven’t already.)

It’s continued to fascinate me since then how many people are quite happy to contort themselves into creating all kinds of imaginative explanations for the myriad issues the team is facing, while at the same time refusing to entertain the most obvious reason.

There’s a philosophical idea known as Occam’s Razor that says when faced with competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected. In simple terms, when deciding between two or more likely explanations for something, the most-simple is likely to be correct.

While that obviously doesn’t always apply, watching people try to create weird and wonderful reasons for the issues at LFC is like watching people sitting in a burning house debating why it’s so hot, with some suggesting global warming is to blame, and others saying they think the central heating is on the blink, all while watching the flames growing around them.

I don’t think we should overlook the impact Jota’s passing has had on Salah and how it’s likely to have played a role in what’s happened.

We can’t forget this is the player who was in tears after the first home game of the season when standing watching the Kop sing his team-mate’s song.

While that doesn’t justify what he’s done, I think it’s important we continue to recognise that we’re dealing with young men who have been through a highly emotional period of their lives and are still going through it.

As a man who has to constantly remind myself that I am officially middle-aged at 45 years old and no longer the mid-twenties young buck my mind wants to tell me I am – and knowing I’m still trying to work out this complicated world on a daily basis - it entertains me that we refer to footballers in their early thirties as people who should have all the answers and never make mistakes, simply because they’re the “old” players compared to the kids they’re playing with.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received when I used to suffer with periods of dark depression is that we should never make big decisions about anything when we’re in that state, because it skews our view of everything and convinces us that we’re sure about something that we otherwise wouldn’t be.

I’ve learnt since that the same is true for any extreme emotional state. Just think how many people get married quickly because they’ve been swept away by an extreme state of love, only to realise a year later it was all a terrible mistake and get divorced as rapidly as they tied the knot.

For me, Salah has been let down by his agent and closest advisors, because the wise thing to do during this period was to accept and acknowledge he’s in a highly emotional period of his life and making such a big decision after only a week of being left out of the starting team was the wrong move.

The Wrong Move

Having said all that, while having sympathy for what Salah is going through, I do think it’s a disgrace that he chose this time to make his point in the way he did, with a premeditated attack on the manager and the club.

I think all true Liverpool supporters have been raised with the same mantra: no one person is bigger than the club, no matter what they’ve achieved on or off the pitch.

Arguably the greatest living club legend, Kenny Dalglish, epitomises that principle in every way he’s ever dealt with our great institution, which sets the standard for all other legends to follow.

At the same time, it’s also important for us to remember whenever anything comes out publicly that none of us know the details of what’s happened behind the scenes, including what has been said between the various parties involved.

Which is why I started this article referencing Jurgen Klopp’s comments about Jordan Henderson when the time came for him to leave Liverpool.

I’ve been thinking over the weekend how much it would have helped the squad to have kept Henderson as part of the set-up in the same way that he’s now accepted being part of the England national squad.

Imagine having someone of Jordan’s calibre able to play in various positions on the pitch and add so much off it. If he’d decided to stay as a squad player he’s likely to have still participated in between 30 and 50 games per season, and I wonder if given the chance to make the same decision again he would have made a different one.

But, importantly, at the time, having had a fully honest conversation, both parties knew it wouldn’t work for anyone when Henderson had to start being left out of the team on a regular basis, so a parting of the ways was needed.

An Honest Conversation

The relevance to this situation is that, regardless of anything else that has or hasn’t been said or done behind the scenes, Salah’s reaction to being left out of only three starting line-ups in one week suggests that the idea of him not being a regular starter at some point over the two extra seasons he signed for wasn’t explicitly discussed and agreed upon in advance.

While most of us were desperate for him to sign his new contract, any rational football person – fan, coach or pundit - would know that at some point during the course of the next two seasons Mo Salah was likely to have to transition from an automatic starter to a squad player.

I don’t think any of us expected that transition to start so early into this season, but it seems strange that he would react this way if it had been made expressly clear to him when he signed the new contract that his place in the starting line-up during its duration was only assured if he maintained his level of performance.

Perhaps the club would say that the terms on which they extended his contract made it clear that that was the case, or maybe they did have the same conversation with Salah that they had with Henderson and he just hasn’t taken it on board in the same way.

Either way, something has gone awry that didn’t need to.

No Surprises

It’s also important to note that his actions over the weekend should not be a surprise to anyone.

Salah was putting his own situation ahead of the team during last season when we were challenging for a league title and he was doing a very similar thing in making pre-planned statements to journalists after games in order to put the club under pressure to do what was best for him, regardless of the impact it had on the team.

In that context, we do need to ask questions of the people entrusted with the decision to extend his deal, because it was clear who Salah was before any of this happened, we’ve just all been wilfully blind to it because of what he was delivering on the pitch.

The truth is that while he will go down as one of the greatest Liverpool players of all time, he has always mainly put his own needs first. He has for many years been something we’ve never really entertained at Liverpool – a superstar player who expects and receives superstar treatment.

While he was delivering superstar numbers we’ve all been happy to go along with him getting that special treatment but, once those super-human numbers dipped, this dilemma was always going to raise its head.

So, while my view is that the club must always come first and the only way back for Salah is to apologise to his manager, team-mates and supporters and realise he has to earn his place in the team just like everyone else, there are lessons to be learnt by the club about how this type of situation should be handled in the future.

It seems that the wisdom from the end of Jordan Henderson’s days might have been forgotten during the summer.

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