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Of the many questions Liverpool are facing right now, there’s one that goes much further back – further than this season, further than this century even. It’s about the ability – maybe even the know-how – to retain a title.

It’s a remarkable thing to say for a club that are England’s most decorated, with 20 top-flight titles in addition to six Champions League crowns. Yet Liverpool haven’t successfully defended the league since 1983-84, a season that marked the culmination of a period in which they just reeled off championships.

They’ve most recently had to watch Pep Guardiola do exactly that, with the Manchester City manager looking completely re-energised after Sunday’s 3-0 win over the Reds. That marquee result also marked another Premier League narrative shift this season. As Guardiola himself has referenced, it feels like we’ve already gone from Liverpool being declared certain champions, to Arsenal being feted as inevitable winners, and now to the inevitability that City will surely reel Mikel Arteta’s side in. Let’s wait and see.

It is nevertheless true that the Premier League hasn’t had a proper “chase” for some time, and there was one man Liverpool had to watch master it as the finest exponent of retaining the title: Sir Alex Ferguson. He was more aware than anyone that such relentlessness required hard decisions; that you couldn’t let the glow of victory soften your team – or some of the thinking around it.

It was hard not to think of such rationale considering one of the main storylines from that City victory: another pitiful performance from Mohamed Salah.

This newsletter argued a mere three weeks ago that it was probably time for Arne Slot to drop the Egyptian, and I’m now going one step further: they should have let him go in the summer.

This isn’t to “pick” on a star who, up until the last few months, had a fair claim to being the best-performing player on the planet.

Salah may even end up rendering columns like this absolutely absurd by suddenly revving up over the next few months and delivering a seventh Champions League for Liverpool. For now, though, the Premier League looks beyond them.

But it is that very title defence – and the question of becoming the kind of team that just wins league after league – where this is about something bigger.

Salah may have been one of the best players in the world, but he is 33, and every bad spell now brings more pressing questions over the extent to which he can sustain, or even reach, the same level. In other words, how much of that huge new contract is he worth?

Liverpool’s recruitment over the last decade has rightly been lauded as among the smartest in the game, but, as I like to say, it’s hard not to feel this was another case where they zagged when they might have been expected to zig.

The smart move, surely, was to let Salah go – maybe even to not be swayed by emotion.

That’s not just about his own trajectory and potential cost. It’s also about what Liverpool spent.

If there was ever a moment to sell a beloved club legend, it is probably when you are finally joyous champions again, and also spending over £400m on a raft of glossy new players. They are the best way possible to soften the blow for fans of losing such a star.

Ferguson did something similar at far less propitious moments. He got rid of top-scoring Ruud van Nistelrooy at the end of a 2005-06 season that was commonly cast as an “annus horribilis”, given it also saw the acrimonious departure of Roy Keane and so much more. The result? Immediately, three titles in a row.

That’s why it’s hard not to think that, by contrast, Liverpool just felt they couldn’t let Salah go. That he’d been too good, maybe even too popular. Did a certain emotion interfere? Did the glow of victory affect the thought process?

It was certainly a very un-Ferguson decision. It was even a very un-BootRoom decision, given the way Liverpool’s great title winners of the 1970s and 1980s used to abruptly discard greats for the next big thing. Bob Paisley was as ruthless in that regard as Ferguson.

One obvious response to almost all of the points made in this newsletter is that Liverpool are actually undergoing a significant transition, which is why we are seeing what we are seeing.

If that is the rationale, though, it only makes the Salah decision less logical, not more.

The club have spent an unprecedented amount on a new forward line, but they can’t yet play in the way they have envisioned because this dominant star is still there. That’s only accentuated by the reality that Salah’s type of game – especially given what football is in 2025 – has a disproportionate gravitational effect on the rest of the team. If the Egyptian is in there, the rest of the system can’t help but be shaped around him. This only slows potential transition.

It has arguably made everything even more difficult for Slot, who now has to almost work between two ideas of a team: one with Salah, one for after him.

Is it any wonder we’re not seeing players like Florian Wirtz show their best level?

Sources close to Liverpool have offered a number of thoughts on that. One is the belief that they pretty much know they can sell him to the Saudi Pro League whenever they want, especially given how persistent the interest in Darwin Núñez was.

For Liverpool’s part, the new contract means they will likely get considerable cash for Salah in a way they wouldn’t have in the summer. That can obviously make a significant difference in the medium term, helping fund future title challenges.

That, however, might still mean that a season – and a season itself can bring a lot of value and cash – has potentially been wasted. It might even have delayed the adaptation of Wirtz and Alexander Isak, while inadvertently ensuring there is even more pressure on them.

All of this can change, of course. You only have to look at this season’s narrative shifts. You only have to look at Salah’s own career. He’s been written off at Liverpool before, only to come back – well, to the level he did last season.

Salah still has that in him. Plenty of players these days score lots of goals into their late 30s.

It’s just that, even as the final stages of that new contract were being discussed, there were signs this drop-off was coming.

So, until Salah can get back to anywhere near his previous levels, the feeling will persist that Liverpool should have gone and changed even more in the summer.

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