Mohamed Salah owes it to himself to ensure his picture-book Liverpool career doesn’t end like this

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Liverpool Echo IconSportFootballLiverpool FCPaul Gorst writes on the talks planned between Arne Slot and Mohamed Salah - and the ramifications they will have for Liverpool's futureThe outcome of Friday's face-to-face talks between Arne Slot and Mohamed Salah will have huge ramifications for the rest of Liverpool's season and beyond.Salah, whose insubordination at Leeds United on Saturday evening has been well documented, welcomed back his head coach and team-mates to the AXA Training Centre on Friday after they returned from a successful trip to Milan, where they had inflicted a first Champions League defeat at home for Inter in three years on Tuesday night.It was an encouraging sign that Liverpool were able to secure such a high-profile victory without the output of their talismanic Egyptian, given he is now set for Africa Cup of Nations duty after Saturday's visit from Brighton & Hove at Anfield.Whether Salah is involved or not in that will be decided by the conversations that are had behind the scenes at the club's £50m Kirkby training base.If the 33-year-old is contrite and apologetic, then the week that was might just go on to be remembered as a storm in a tea cup for a player whose picture-book career on Merseyside still has 18 months to run, contract-wise.If Salah digs in, however, and is insistent that he stands by his calculated post-match interview, then there may very well be no way back, even for someone who is only outscored in 133 years of club history by Roger Hunt and Ian Rush.For supporters, it would be a heart-breaking way to end what has been one of the all-time great careers at Anfield, even for a club who are able to boast the sort of history as the Reds.The images of the forward having lunch with former team-mate Jordan Henderson this week were interesting. If the Liverpool star was looking to gain a feel for what it is like plying your trade in the Saudi Pro League, then Henderson's miserable and mercifully short-lived experience at Al-Ettifaq might prove instructive.As the poster-boy for sport in the Middle East, Salah may well have a vastly different experience to Henderson, who moved to Ajax around six months after his shock departure to link up with Steven Gerrard in the summer of 2023.Ettifaq are not a giant of the SPL and it is more likely Salah's availability would pique the interest of the four clubs who are owned by the Public Investment Fund of the Saudi kingdom, where the money on offer is eye-watering.But Henderson's surprise mid-summer switch to Saudi also robbed a Premier League and Champions League-winning captain of a famous send-off in the manner afforded to the likes of Roberto Firmino and, of course,Jurgen Klopp.How your Liverpool exit is engineered when you are a player who has given so much to the club should take prominence in the thinking and in his heart of hearts, does Salah want his Klopp moment?

Or is he content to exit stage left midway through a season to a league that is far below the elite level he clearly feels he can still operate at?To see Salah shuffle off when the transfer window opens would be painful for those who still worship the 'Egyptian King'. It would, frankly, represent a bizarre outcome and even for the breakneck speed at which the modern game now moves, some inside Anfield are said to be bewildered by how quickly it has all come to this.Salah owes it to both the Reds' worldwide fanbase and himself to make sure the pipe bomb he detonated in the Elland Road mixed zone is not his last hurrah as a Liverpool player.Cooler heads can still prevail and the admission from an otherwise guarded Slot that he does not want to lose last season's 29-goal top scorer should act as an olive branch towards finding a resolution.

Salah's career at Anfield simply cannot end like this.Paul GorstPaul Gorst is the Liverpool ECHO's Liverpool FC correspondent and brings readers the inside track on all matters Anfield day in, day out. A journalist with over a decade's worth of experience, he has worked at the ECHO since 2016.