Mohamed Salah has recently been benched at Liverpool mainly due to a mix of tactical decisions by Arne Slot, concerns about the team’s defensive balance and form, and escalating tension after Salah’s public criticism of the club and coach, which has also introduced a disciplinary and political element to his omission.

Key reasons Salah was benched

  • Arne Slot wanted a more defensively solid right side and felt Salah was not offering enough work without the ball during a poor run of results, so he used other options (like Szoboszlai or Hugo) on the right instead.
  • Liverpool had suffered a stretch of bad form (including nine losses in 12 in all competitions), and Slot experimented with lineups that didn’t include Salah from the start to make the team more compact and harder to expose in transition.
  • Even when Salah was on the bench for multiple games, Liverpool remained technically unbeaten in some of those league fixtures, which gave Slot cover to keep justifying the decision publicly as “picking the best team for the opponent.”

Salah’s explosive reaction

  • After being an unused substitute for the third straight match (notably the 3–3 draw against Leeds), Salah gave a fiery post‑match interview saying he had been “thrown under the bus” and that someone at the club wanted him to take the blame for the team’s problems.
  • He stressed that after everything he had contributed over the years, he couldn’t understand why he was repeatedly benched and felt the club was casting him aside, hinting this could be his final days at Anfield.
  • The interview triggered a media storm, with pundits branding his comments “disgraceful” and saying he had caused “carnage” inside the club, deepening the sense of a breakdown in his relationship with Slot and parts of the hierarchy.

Tactical vs. disciplinary angle

  • Publicly, Slot has framed the benching as a tactical choice: he says he is simply choosing the lineup he thinks best suits the opponent and insists it is “nothing personal” with Salah.
  • However, after Salah’s outburst, Liverpool went a step further in at least one major game by not selecting him at all (not even on the bench) against Inter in the Champions League, which has been widely interpreted as a punishment for his comments and a signal of how serious the rift has become.
  • Around the same time, Salah appeared to scrub some Liverpool references from his social media, fueling fan speculation that he is maneuvering for a move and that the benching is part of a messy separation rather than just a short‑term tactical tweak.

What fans and forums are saying

  • On forums, Liverpool and neutral fans are split: some argue Slot is right to bench anyone who doesn’t fit his pressing and defensive demands at 33 years old, even a legend; others think it is madness to sideline one of the club’s greatest ever players in a team already struggling for creativity.
  • Many posts frame it as a power struggle: Salah trying to protect his legacy and control his exit, versus a new coach and ownership structure trying to show they are bigger than any one star.
  • There is also a lot of speculation that the benching and the rant are setting the stage for a big transfer, possibly after the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations, with some fans resigned to the idea that Salah has effectively played his last major chapter for Liverpool.

In short

  • Immediate reason : Tactical choice and defensive balance during a bad run, with Slot preferring more work rate and structure on the right flank.
  • Deeper reason : A deteriorating relationship and a very public outburst from Salah, which turned a tactical decision into a full‑blown disciplinary and political issue and left his Liverpool future in serious doubt.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.