Dejan Lovren's Critique of Mohamed Salah's Treatment at Liverpool
Dejan Lovren has never been one to pick the quiet route. Asked about Mohamed Salah’s treatment during his final season at Liverpool, he didn’t so much lift the lid as rip it clean off.
“The way they treated him this season is not harsh. It’s disgusting,” he told WinWin, his frustration aimed squarely at the storm that built around his close friend as form dipped and speculation over his future grew. One underwhelming campaign after nearly a decade of elite output, and suddenly the club’s modern icon became an open target.
For Lovren, that shift crossed a line. Salah, the man who dragged Liverpool through countless tight afternoons, found himself painted as the problem.
“Why didn’t they talk about him like this for the past eight or nine years?” Lovren asked. “OK, one season, and then he’s the target again. There are so many other issues.”
Lovren vs Carragher
The Croatian did not dance around names. Jamie Carragher, a Liverpool legend turned high-profile pundit, came in for a direct hit after previously accusing Salah of selfishness.
Lovren questioned the motive behind those comments, suggesting they were driven more by the demands of television than by any deep tactical insight. Ratings, not reality.
“He’s being really heavily criticised,” Lovren said. “Some pundits do it just to attract attention, maybe because they haven’t succeeded in other areas of their lives, so now they need to perform well… especially Carragher, he says whatever he wants.”
Then came the personal challenge.
“I always said he should tell him this to his face, say all these things to Mo to his face. He’ll never say that. Because I know he never will, because he never said it to me. He’s talked badly about me too, but he never said that to me anyway. You know, he’s just performing on TV and he gets paid for it, so he needs to perform this way.”
No soft edges there. Lovren painted a picture of a player hung out in public while the loudest voices stayed comfortably behind the studio desk.
Finger pointed at Slot
The criticism did not stop with the media. Lovren then turned towards the dugout and placed Salah’s decision to walk away from Anfield at the feet of one man: Arne Slot.
Inside Liverpool, the story of Salah’s exit has been framed around age, contracts, and the natural evolution of a squad. Lovren sees something far simpler – and far more human.
“I don’t think it’s the management (that pushed Salah to leave),” the current PAOK defender said. “I think it’s just one person, and I think it’s just the manager. They didn’t have a good relationship. Let’s put it simply.”
He drew a sharp contrast with the years under Jurgen Klopp, when Salah became Liverpool’s record Premier League goalscorer and the face of a new era.
“With Klopp, he had a really good relationship. It wasn’t always perfect, but they knew each other very well, let’s say that too, and they trusted each other, they liked each other, and Mo gave everything on the pitch for Klopp, and Klopp gave him that trust. But (with Slot) it was the opposite. It’s that simple, and everyone knows it because when you look at the previous eight or nine seasons, he did really well.”
Trust. That was the word that kept coming back. Under Klopp, Salah played with it. Under Slot, Lovren suggests, it vanished.
“He never felt that support”
For Lovren, the real failure sits even higher than the manager’s office. He believes the club’s leadership allowed their biggest star to stand alone in the firing line.
Salah himself has hinted at feeling exposed. Lovren went further.
“There are other players who should also take responsibility and say, ‘yes, this is my fault’, but you know, some players never came forward,” he said. “There was mismanagement; internally, they didn’t handle it well. They didn’t handle it well.”
He described a dressing room where problems were allowed to spill outwards instead of being contained and resolved behind closed doors.
“Even if you have some problems, you have to talk about it in the dressing room, and like I said, Mo never felt that support. He was always the front-page headline, ‘Ah, it’s Mohamed Salah, don’t be surprised.’ I mean… it’s a deep-seated issue.”
A club legend, a fractured relationship with a new manager, a vacuum of protection from above, and a media pile-on that, in Lovren’s eyes, turned “harsh” into “disgusting”.
Salah has gone. The goals, the trophies, the era he helped define – all now part of Liverpool’s past. The question Lovren leaves hanging is sharper: when the next icon comes under fire, will the club stand with him, or let him face the music alone again?
