Manchester United and England legend Wayne Rooney has accused senior Liverpool stars Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk of lacking leadership and displaying different body language since both signed lucrative new contracts with the club earlier this year. The Premier League champions lost for a fifth time in their last six outings across all competitions over the weekend.
Liverpool lost 3-2 to Brentford on Saturday evening, a result which means the Reds have now lost each of their last four Premier League fixtures, sliding down to seventh in the table after initially winning five on the bounce – albeit not especially convincingly – to start the campaign. Arne Slot’s sole victory in recent weeks has been a Champions League annihilation of Eintracht Frankfurt, which came a few days after a shock defeat to Manchester United and many had thought would be like a watershed moment and catalyst for improved performances moving forward.
Rooney, a five-time Premier League champion during his own illustrious career, suggested that the leadership Liverpool enjoyed from Salah and Van Dijk during a momentous 2024-25 has diminished.
“No-one has seen this coming, it’s hit them quick, it’s hit them hard and I think they’re struggling to find a way out of it,” Rooney said on his self-titled BBC podcast, The Wayne Rooney Show.
“This is a time where the manager and the leaders in the team need to figure it out very quickly. Virgil van Dijk and Mohamed Salah, they’ve signed new deals but I don’t think they’ve really led that team this season.
“I think body language tells you a lot, and I think we’re seeing slightly different body language from the two of them. They are the top two players in that team and if their body language is not right, that affects everyone else. I might be wrong on this, but if I was a Liverpool fan or the manager, that would be a big concern for me.”
For months, there was uncertainty as to whether Salah and Van Dijk would even still be Liverpool players in 2025-26. The pair were both due to be out of contract at the end of last season and Salah in particular put public pressure on the club on several occasions to sort him out a new deal. Salah penned fresh terms – with a significant pay rise reported at the time to be £400,000-per-week – in mid-April.
Van Dijk then followed suit just a few days later with his own new two-year contract on a similarly eye-watering wage. Only Erling Haaland, whose £500,000-per-week contract at Manchester City makes him the Premier League’s highest-paid players, earns more in England. But it doesn’t sit well with supporters that since landing an enormous payday – the equivalent of in excess of £40 million ($53m) over the course of each contract until 2027 – both players have slipped backwards in terms of the performance levels that drove Liverpool to last season’s title.
One other contributing factor that cannot be ignored, however, is the mental toll of Diogo Jota’s untimely and tragic death. Salah was very close friends with his late team-mate and has openly said that he’s found Jota’s passing difficult to accept.
In the same way that success breeds success, negative momentum can be extremely difficult to escape in sport. Liverpool will be seeking to avoid four successive Premier League defeats becoming five when Aston Villa visit Anfield on Saturday night. Dangerously for Arne Slot’s team, Villa are on the opposite run of form, having won four league matches on the spin after initially failing to claim maximum points from any of their opening five of the campaign.
Villa, who beat Manchester City last time out over the weekend, are now level on points with Liverpool, marginally behind on goal difference and will pose a significant threat level.
Things won’t get any easier for Liverpool thereafter, with Real Madrid arriving at Anfield in the Champions League on November 4. Los Blancos currently lead the way in La Liga by five points after claiming victory in the season’s first Clasico against Barcelona.
