MO SALAH munched on a piece of fruit while boss Arne Slot failed to avoid Liverpool’s worst domestic losing streak for 72 years.
Anfield’s Egyptian King appeared to be eating mango and pineapple off a plastic fork as he watched Wednesday’s 3-0 home Carabao Cup humbling by Crystal Palace from the stands alongside all but one of the Reds’ first team.
Slot’s bizarre team selection was clearly a factor as the Reds lost a fifth game in a row to an English club for the first time since Don Welsh’s side in 1953.
But it was also a third defeat by Palace this season after losing the Community Shield on penalties and 2-1 in the Premier League at Selhurst Park last month.
No expense may have been spared in helping Slot build on his title triumph in his first year in charge.
But amid what is now a full-blown Kop crisis, the Liverpool hierarchy were given food for thought by their Dutch manager that they will find difficult to stomach.
Slot suggested a close-season spend of £426million — the highest ever by a Prem club in the summer window — has not been enough to fill his bowl.
That feast included Alexander Isak for a British record £130m while Florian Wirtz cost an initial £100m.
Salah and skipper Virgil van Dijk were also persuaded to sign on for a further two years, each at salaries of around £400,000 a week — a total cost of £84m.
That means a total investment of more than half a BILLION pounds — before you add the big, fat pay cheques the likes of Isak and Wirtz will have commanded.
Yet Slot appeared to have gone all Oliver Twist after losing to Palace in a competition Liverpool had won twice in the previous four seasons.
Their misery was compounded by 18-year-old defender Amara Nallo’s second red card on his second first-team appearance.
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Yet Slot insisted: “This felt the right decision and I haven’t changed my opinion after the result. With our starters we haven’t been able to beat Palace.”
John W Henry, whose Fenway Sports Group control the 20-time English champions, could even be forgiven for thinking he heard Slot say: “Please sir, I want some more.”
Salah, named PFA Players’ Player of the Year for a record third time in August, has been a shadow of his usual self this term.
But rather than giving his 33-year-old superstar a chance to whet his appetite for the major challenges ahead, Slot named three teenagers in his starting line-up on Wednesday.
There were TEN changes from the side that suffered a fourth Premier League defeat in a row as they lost 3-2 at Brentford on Saturday.
And a bench packed with kids — with no one older than 21 — boasted NINE first-team appearances between them. Slot did everything but hold out that begging bowl as he compared the strength of his back-ups to Pep Guardiola’s charges who secured a 3-1 win at Swansea.
He declared: “I saw Manchester City’s line-up and I don’t think they had one starter from the weekend. But if you look at their line-up, it felt like they had played with their 11 starters.
“Maybe that gives a little bit of an insight to everybody that has always said how big of a squad we have.”
Henry, his FSG honchos football CEO Michael Edwards and sporting director Richard Hughes, would surely beg to differ about what came across as a whine amidst a developing debacle.
Slot stressed the line-up he selected against Palace was down to the Reds’ heavy workload — with tough games against Aston Villa, Real Madrid and City following next.
He said: “I only rested the players that have played mainly in the last week. This is the line-up you get. That shows you we already have a few injuries. With a big week coming up for me it felt the best choice.
“Combined with that, this club has always chosen to give playing time to young academy players in the League Cup.”
Except not really under Slot. The Palace clash was his eighth in the competition — and only three youngsters started any of the previous seven.
Tyler Morton, now of Lyon, was 21 when he played against Brighton last season and he was joined by 18-year-old Trey Nyoni in a 2-1 win over Southampton.
This season’s Carabao Cup campaign began with another 2-1 victory over Saints, with Nyoni and Rio Ngumoha, 17, there at the first whistle.
In last season’s opening 5-1 win over West Ham there were no kids in the starting XI, and none in the squads for the two-legged semis with Tottenham.
Nor were any in sight, either, for the 2-1 final defeat to Newcastle at Wembley. Predecessor Jurgen Klopp picked a whole team of youngsters for a 5-0 loss at Aston Villa when the first team were on Club World Cup duty in December 2021.
And “Klopp’s Kids” beat Chelsea to lift the 2024 trophy as Van Dijk’s extra-time winner made light of a raft of injuries.
Slot’s wafer-thin explanations come with the Reds’ five-game winning feast at the start of the season a distant memory.
The former Feyenoord manager is not yet under pressure from above even if the fare now being served up has become increasingly unpalatable, although mouth-watering to their rivals.
But a sixth successive domestic defeat against Villa on Saturday night — something Liverpool have not suffered since 1948 — would be even more difficult for John W Henry to stomach.
