Is this it, then? Is this how Mohamed Salah's Liverpool love story ends? No fond farewell at an adoring Anfield? Just an embarrassing, back-door exit for the fallen Kop idol? This weekend's Premier League clash with Brighton was only meant to be Salah's final game for Liverpool before heading off to Morocco to represent Egypt at the Africa Cup of Nations – but there's now every chance that he'll never play for the club again.
It remains a difficult idea to wrap one's head around. Six months ago, Salah was saluting Arne Slot for affording him the freedom to wreck havoc on the Premier League. At Elland Road last Saturday, he effectively accused the Dutchman of making him a scapegoat for the champions' struggles this season.
The likes of Steven Gerrard are still hoping that common sense prevails, that a way can be found to welcome Salah back into the fold after he was dropped for the midweek trip to Milan. But thanks to the intrepid reporting of Clarence Seedorf, we learned after the 1-0 win over Inter at San Siro that Slot is not in a conciliatory mood. As a result, the expectation is that Salah will be once again admitted from the squad for the visit of Brighton, meaning we may have already seen the last of 'The Egyptian King' in a Liverpool shirt.
It's a desperately sad situation, especially for the fans, but it's not one that the board can really afford to dwell on if the relationship between the manager and the player really is broken beyond all repair. Indeed, the only positive aspect of this dreadfully negative situation for Liverpool is that there is a player available on the January transfer market that would help fill the massive void left behind by the third-highest goal-scorer in the club's history…
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Reducing the reliance
It is obviously important to stress that there is no like-for-like replacement for Salah. No other winger currently operating in Europe's 'Big Five' leagues comes close to matching his output over the past eight years. Last season alone, he was directly involved in 57 goals in all competitions – that's 18 more than Barcelona's teenage sensation Lamine Yamal, who finished second in the Ballon d'Or voting (Salah was fourth).
No matter how hard they look, then, Liverpool aren't going to find a right-sided attacker capable of rocking up at Anfield and immediately replicating Salah's sensational strike-rate. However, Liverpool have already made some highly significant moves towards reducing the team's dependence upon Salah to score goals, with more than £200 million spent on signing Alexander Isak and Hugo Ekitike during the summer.
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Perfect sense
The problem, of course, is that while Ekitike looks like a star in the making, Isak has been a massive disappointment, with the Swede having netted just twice so far while struggling horribly to get back up to full speed after his summer strike. Nonetheless, the major power-brokers at Anfield remain supremely confident that Isak will come good once he's 100 per cent fit and belatedly prove himself the kind of prolific No.9 that Liverpool have for so long lacked.
What the Reds most definitely do not possess right now, though, is a wide player blessed with the requisite pace and physicality to thrive in the Premier League – which is precisely why the mounting speculation linking Liverpool with a January move for Antoine Semenyo makes so much sense.
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Stop-gap solution
Despite Salah's sudden slump in form, Federico Chiesa has continued to struggle for game time under Slot. The Italian may have endured a succession of injury issues last season, but he has repeatedly made a big impact off the bench this term, so we can only conclude that Slot still doesn't trust Chiesa sufficiently to start him.
Jeremie Frimpong's inability to stay fit has also scuppered whatever chance there was of the versatile Dutchman proving himself a viable alternative to Salah on the right wing. Consequently, when Slot eventually decided to drop the misfiring 33-year-old, he deployed the multi-talented Dominik Szoboszlai on the right flank and moved Florian Wirtz back into his preferred No.10 position.
In fairness to Slot, results have improved without Salah (although that wouldn't have been hard!), with Liverpool picking up much-needed victories over West Ham and Inter either side of a couple of disappointing draws with Sunderland and Leeds United. However, stationing Szoboszlai on the right-hand side doesn't look any more like a long-term solution to Liverpool's problems than putting the Hungarian at right-back. Liverpool need a proper winger to play the role – and Semenyo fits the bill perfectly.
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'Allowed me to express myself'
Semenyo turns 26 in January and was playing Championship football for Bristol City as recently as two years ago – but he's improved exponentially since the appointment of Andoni Iraola as Bournemouth boss in the summer of 2023, with the London-born forward presently well on track to better last season's career-high Premier League haul of 11 goals.
"I think he's allowing me to be myself," Semenyo said of the Spaniard in an interview with the club's official website just last month. "I just need to play free-minded. We've made the game plan clear and what we need to do and, in that framework, he's allowed me to express myself and be creative. That's why my game is flourishing. Running is so important for him too, and it's all come together really well."
"Nothing really goes through my mind when I’m out there, I’m freestyling half the time! Most full-backs expect me to go down the line and cross it, but I like to improvise and mix things up."
Tellingly, Iraola has been reluctant to take all of the credit for Semenyo developing into one of the most feared forwards in the Premier League, with the 43-year-old regularly pointing out that the Ghana international is a pleasure to coach.