Curtis Jones has revealed Mohamed Salah apologised to the Liverpool squad for the fallout from his interview criticising the club and Arne Slot.
Salah was omitted from Liverpool’s Champions League win against Inter having accused the club of throwing him under a bus in response to a poor run of results. The striker also claimed his relationship with Slot had broken down and that he had earned his position in the team after eight phenomenal seasons.
Slot has refused to disclose whether he received an apology from Salah before recalling the 33-year-old for last Saturday’s win over Brighton. At a press conference on Friday, the head coach said he would not comment further on the Salah situation to avoid creating “a distraction” while the Egypt international is at the Africa Cup of Nations.
However Jones, in an interview with Sky Sports, said Salah had spoken to his teammates about the furore that followed his incendiary interview after the 3-3 draw at Leeds and apologised.
The Liverpool midfielder said: “Mo is his own man and he can say his own stuff. He apologised to us and was like: ‘If I’ve affected anybody or made you feel any sort of way, I apologise.’ That’s the man that he is. I can only speak from me knowing Mo and how he is with us and how he acted on that. He was positive as well. He was the exact same Mo, he had a big smile on his face and everybody was exactly the same with him. I guess it’s just part of wanting to be a winner”
Jones insisted he would have a bigger problem with a teammate being happy to sit on the bench than Salah claiming he should be in the team. “I get that there are certain ways you can go about things,” he said. “But if a lad’s fine to just be on the bench and he doesn’t want to play and help the team, then I think that’s more of an issue.”
Liverpool are unbeaten in the five games since Slot reacted to damaging home defeats by Nottingham Forest and PSV by dropping Salah to the bench. Jones believes the forward’s outspoken comments were not designed to destabilise the team.
“When there’s been any sort of anger from us, including myself, it’s always been from a good place,” he said. “In the moment, it might not have come out in the right way, but it’s never been to affect the team, the staff, the manager, anybody like that. We’re past that now and we’re gelling well as a team, playing well and starting to win games.”
Slot has said Florian Wirtz’s adaptation to the Premier League is being helped by the Liverpool playmaker bulking up in the gym.
Wirtz impressed in Liverpool’s 2-0 defeat of Brighton last weekend when his strength in the physical challenges was noticeably improved. The £116m signing has yet to register a goal or an assist in 15 league appearances for his new club but Slot insists there has been clear progress from the Germany international. A few extra kilos of muscle is one contributory factor, according to the Liverpool head coach.
“Florian has improved a lot,” said Slot, who hopes Dominik Szoboszlai will have recovered from an ankle injury to face Tottenham on Saturday. “I am not talking about his ability on the ball because we could see from the start that he was top. But I saw in one moment against Brighton where he took the ball off Dom, dribbled and a player came to him and he pushed him away and kept on dribbling. Then he provided a cutback cross for Hugo [Ekitiké] who shot over the bar.
“Later, he won the duel with [Jan Paul] Van Hecke that led to the counterattack with the shot from Mo [Salah]. In those moments, you see it gets easier for him. It takes a lot of effort for him to play in this intensity but he is getting used to it. That is my take.”
Slot believes a combination of gym work and game-time is behind Wirtz’s recent improvement. He added: “A lot of them have grown in kilograms, in muscle. That’s one thing. And, secondly, if you are only in the gym you cannot be prepared for 90 minutes of Premier League football. It is about playing games. I would say training as well but we hardly ever do that, so it’s playing, playing, playing.
“The only way to make these players better is by playing them. I have played players during the season when you would usually take pre-season for that. The only way to get Florian stronger, Macca [Alexis Mac Allister], Conor [Bradley], is to play games. It’s a combination of things but definitely also about the gym work where they all get stronger.”
Szoboszlai returned to light training on Thursday after being injured in the Brighton game. Bradley is available for Spurs after suspension and Jeremie Frimpong is back in the squad for the first time since suffering a hamstring injury in October.
