Arne Slot makes honest Mo Salah admission and expects Liverpool star to ignore him

Arne Slot is still celebrating his Premier League title triumph, but the Liverpool manager did express one concern he has about Mohamed Salah despite the Egyptian signing a new contract at Anfield

Arne Slot admits he does not expect Mohamed Salah to maintain the incredible standard he set for Liverpool this season going forward. But the boss knows the Egyptian will do everything to prove him wrong.

Salah, 32, enjoyed one of the best seasons of his football career, spearheading the Merseysiders to their 20th top-flight title. The Egyptian has been a world-class operator at Anfield ever since arriving from AS Roma in the summer of 2017 for £39million. His goals this season earned him a brand new two-year contract, which keeps him on the red side of Merseyside until 2027.

But while the former Chelsea forward was almost unstoppable for Liverpool this term, Slot does not expect the forward to maintain his jaw-dropping output.

While speaking to The Athletic, Slot was asked about Salah’s record of contributing 33 goals and 23 assists this season. The Dutchman replied: “Yeah and standards he’s probably not going to live up to in the upcoming two seasons.

“I hope he can, but it’s not even necessary. Even if he scores and assists a few less, it will still be a great season.

“But I know Mo, he’s going to try to achieve even more. He’s going to work so hard every single day to do even more special things for this club.”

In the Premier League alone, Salah has scored 28 goals and contributed 18 assists going into the final game – a visit from FA Cup winners Crystal Palace on Sunday. Throughout Slot’s debut campaign, there was speculation that Salah would leave this summer, due to his previous deal expiring at the end of the campaign.

The rumours eventually came to an end in April, when the club announced that he would be committing his future at Anfield.

Meanwhile, few people tipped Slot to achieve such success in his debut campaign, after taking over from Jurgen Klopp. The German spent nine years at the club, winning the Premier League, the Champions League, the FA Cup and two League Cup titles.

Many teams struggle to transition from the incumbent ideas of the previous long-term manager to the new plans their replacement wants to implement. However, Slot believes his similar philosophy to Klopp helped the Reds reach such high levels this year.

The Dutchman added: “I think the reason why this club hired me was that there’s not so much difference between me and Jurgen. There are a lot of similarities in terms of our playing styles.

“So then it’s not so difficult to adjust certain things. If you go from one playing style to another it’s much harder. A lot of things could stay the same and that meant being able to really focus on what needed to be implemented. That’s why I think it was quite fast that you could see certain things being different.

“But still now, even after a season with me, this team are so fast on the counter-attack. I’ve never trained that, by the way! So not everything changed but the few things we had to change we could adjust pretty quickly because a lot of things didn’t need much attention.”

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