John Giles joined The Football Show on Thursday to discuss Liverpool and Mohamed Salah.
Mohamed Salah started this season on fire. He was the best player on the pitch in the Community Shield.
But since then he's struggled. Salah is less involved in Liverpool's build-up play than ever before. He's creating fewer chances for teammates and taking advantage of his own chances less often. He fits in with Liverpool's overall malaise and lack of energy.
That lack of energy is often ascribed to fatigue, but John Giles wonders if Mohamed Salah's new deal has disrupted the morale of the team.
Salah signed a huge contract extension before the start of the season after drawn-out negotiations over the prior season. Giles wonders if the lack of effort and intensity from the likes of Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold might reflect a disrupted dressing room.
"You look at Liverpool and say, has the morale gone?" Giles asked.
"Morale in football is very, very fragile...maybe the Salah situation where he's got a big increase could be a problem. It could be a problem because other lads are playing with him. He's probably earning a lot more than them now.
"And it does happen in football. It happens in life generally."
There's no quantitive analysis that can be done to gauge if Giles' theory is true. He himself hopes it's not true, he just outlines that it is a possibility. A dressing room can fracture quickly and for seemingly petty reasons.
Liverpool wouldn't be the first team to suffer this fate if it is the case.
"It's very, very hard to describe morale. When everybody is pulling together for each other, it's very fragile, any little upset can stop that. And I'm only saying it could be. Salah is a great player, he scored the other night. But you just never know in football.
"There was a lot of controversy over his new contract...he obviously got most of what he wanted, it could be a lot more than the other players.
"I think that If Liverpool had matched [Sadio Mane's] new contract [with Salah's], he would have stayed."
Trent Alexander-Arnold must look inside to get better.
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