Liverpool tensions emerge as Mo Salah row heightens title misery for Jurgen Klopp

Even so, it was a quite spectacular conflagration on the touchline at the London Stadium with Salah so intent on making his point he was pushed away from the row with his manager by his team-mates.

Even Klopp, a man who tends to rush towards confrontation rather than the other way, seemed to be taken aback. Darwin Nunez and then Joe Gomez, both also waiting to come on, intervened and at the end of the game Salah was swiftly off the scene.

Klopp has three games left as Liverpool manager. Salah may well have the same as one of the club’s greatest-ever players. But unlike Alex Ferguson and Wayne Rooney, not even on speaking terms when they collected Manchester United’s 20th — and most recent — league title in May 2013, this dispute came out of nowhere. Even through his resignation announcement and the subsequent crash in form, Klopp has not yet clashed with any of his players — in public at least.

Salah had been dropped for the game — or rested as per interpretation — along with four other team-mates who had started the defeat at Goodison Park on Wednesday.

He was due to come on just as Michail Antonio scored West Ham’s second, although that indignity alone was unlikely to have been enough to prompt such a furious response. Something is certainly amiss between the pair and is unlikely to be waved away as easily as Klopp might hope. “We spoke about it in the dressing room and it is done for me,” Klopp said in his post-match press conference. “That’s it.”

Was the same the case with Salah, he was asked. “That’s my impression,” the Liverpool manager replied.

The bigger picture is that Salah’s contract expires in one year’s time and the lucrative offer from Saudi Arabia has likely not gone away since it was dangled last summer in front of one of the world’s great players. It would be no great surprise to see him leave this summer — although a pity to see such a formidable player depart for a competition of that calibre at such a relatively young age.

Salah’s response when he left the stadium was playful, but also telling: “There’s going to be fire today if I speak.” It was done with half a smile but given this is a man who rarely talks publicly, aside from the occasional grand set-piece interview, it was indicative that he spoke at all.

For the current Liverpool manager these are rapidly becoming someone else’s problems — that someone else being the 45-year-old Dutchman Arne Slot, who will have watched this performance with interest.

Salah made some incursions as a substitute in pursuit of a Liverpool winner and Harvey Elliott struck the bar with a shot in the final stages. Liverpool were, as Klopp said, “super-dominant” for much of the game but also vulnerable with Jarrod Bowen’s first from West Ham coming from another set-piece.

Salah himself has not scored in the recent defeats to Atalanta, Crystal Palace and Everton which has given his club a glimpse of what life might be like in the post-Salah era. It is easy to take for granted that level of goalscoring but once it is gone then fortunes can change rapidly.

Klopp said that he had no choice but to make changes for the fourth game in 10 days and there was something plaintive about his explanation.

“You can find a manager who can play the same team four times? That will be the next generation, not me anymore. I try to do what I think is right.” Even so, with the league title all but slipping away and his Anfield time coming to an end, one might have forgiven him for calling upon the greatest goalscorer still playing in the Premier League. However tired Salah might be, one suspects that he anticipated he would be starting this game.

Nunez, Dominik Szoboszlai, Ibrahima Konate and Curtis Jones were also omitted from the side that lost to Everton. They dominated the first half and for much of the game Luis Diaz was the outstanding player, clipping the post in the first half. But just before half-time, Mohammed Kudus was passed a short corner and Bowen lost Cody Gakpo to head in the first goal. Liverpool after half-time were much better and Andy Robertson, and then Gakpo, took their chances.

Yet Klopp was preparing an attacking substitution when the equaliser came and the row exploded. “I don’t think it looked like they would score in the next few seconds to be 100 per cent honest but it happened anyway,” Klopp said. He said the changes were to “keep controlling the game” and try to get a third goal. Within seconds West Ham had scored and Salah was berating his manager. ​

The penultimate Anfield game for Klopp is next Sunday against Tottenham, and all thoughts will turn towards him and Salah in the interim. Either way, whatever happens, Klopp is leaving after the last game of the season on May 19, although when it comes to Salah it feels another big decision is looming for player and club.