"He wanted to make everyone in the club alert that we have to work more and do better." That's Florian Wirtz's explanation for why Mohamed Salah's now-viral post landed the way it did — and why so many of his Liverpool teammates publicly liked it.
In the days after Liverpool's 4-2 collapse against Aston Villa, Salah posted a pointed call for a return to the "heavy metal" football Jürgen Klopp made famous at Anfield. Arne Slot wasn't named. He didn't have to be. The implication was clear enough that Slot's public silence on the matter said more than any prepared statement could.
Wirtz is doing damage control — and he's not wrong
The German playmaker's take was measured. "In my opinion, it got made bigger than it was. I don't think he attacked anyone." He's probably right that the media ran further with it than the dressing room intended. That's what happens when a departing legend posts a takedown that reads like an exit interview and half the squad hits like within the hour.
But "it wasn't an attack" is also exactly what you'd say if it obviously was. The nuance gets lost fast when your captain is publicly demanding a style change and your manager is visibly declining to respond.
Wirtz did say one genuinely useful thing: Liverpool can still qualify for the Champions League on Sunday against Brentford. After this season, that matters — not as redemption, but as a functional necessity for a club that needs elite European football to recruit, retain, and compete. Miss that and this summer looks considerably darker.
Slot's future is being settled quietly — with a coaching appointment
Whatever the noise around him, Liverpool are making their position on Slot clear without a press conference. The club is set to appoint Etiënne Reijnen, Slot's former set-piece coach from Feyenoord, ahead of the 2026-27 season. You don't bring in a manager's trusted specialist unless you're committed to that manager being around to work with him.
The numbers behind the move are hard to argue with. In three seasons working under Reijnen at Feyenoord, the club conceded just 17 set-piece goals — the best record in the Eredivisie across that period. Liverpool, without him, have shipped 20 from dead balls in the Premier League this season alone. That's the worst in the division. If you were building a case for one specific hire that could transform Liverpool's defensive record overnight, Reijnen is it.
Slot won the Premier League title in his debut season. The mitigating factors behind this year's implosion — most painfully the loss of Diogo Jota — are real, even if they don't fully explain a 20-goal set-piece concession record. Anyone calculating Liverpool's title odds for next season should factor in both the squad's underlying quality and the very specific problem that's about to get addressed.
Salah is leaving. Slot is staying. And Liverpool's odds of being a genuine contender next season depend almost entirely on how ruthlessly they use the summer to fix what this one exposed.
