Mo Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold

Mo Salah provides a ‘huge update’ while Trent Alexander-Arnold is like some sort of pigeon, sending and receiving messages.

These are your Salah days
‘Mo Salah provides huge update on Liverpool contract situation as he breaks Premier League record in Tottenham thrashing’ screams The Sun.

How big is huge? It sounds absolutely massive.

Disappointingly, it’s downgraded by the first paragraph, in which it becomes just a run-of-the-mill ‘update’.

Seven paragraphs in, we’re told that ‘Salah, 32, is approaching the final six months on his contract but is yet to strike an agreement to extend it’.

We know all that. Now what’s the ‘huge update’?

‘The Anfield legend has publicly revealed his desire to stay at the club but continues to admit no deal has been reached.’

Blah blah blah. Stop teasing…

‘Asked if there is an update, Salah replied: “No.”‘

So the ‘huge update’ is literally ‘no update’. FFS.

So you want to be a record-breaker?
Oh and the massive pedant in us feels duty-hound to point out that becoming the first player in Premier League history to reach 10 goals and 10 assists before Christmas is not ‘breaking a Premier League record’.

Not unless you think Neil Armstrong broke a human record by being the first man on the moon.

Summit going on
Maybe Mo Salah used up all his words on his teammates after the game. After all, ‘Unhappy Liverpool stars hold dressing room talks after thrashing Tottenham’ (Express).

‘Holding dressing room talks’ sounds like something a little more formal than Alexis Mac Allister clearly intended when he said: “We spoke about it in the dressing room, we are not happy with the fact we conceded three goals.”

It’s not the Potsdam sodding Conference; it’s a group of footballers saying ‘lads it’s Tottenham; how the f*** did we let them score three sodding goals’?

Over in the Express’ sister paper the Daily Star, they go a step further and claim: ‘Mohamed Salah admits he’s ‘not happy’ after Liverpool’s nine-goal thriller with Tottenham.’

Except he absolutely didn’t; indeed, he even said he was “happy we won because they play an intense game”. Which is the polar opposite of being “not happy”.

But this is what happens when you half-arse a re-write of a Mirror story in which Alexis Mac Allister was quoted as saying the players were “not happy” with the defending.

The re-write was so half-arsed that the Express didn’t even include the Mac Allister quote anywhere except in the headline in which it was wrongly attributed to Salah.

But sod the truth; who isn’t clicking on Salah saying he’s ‘not happy’ after two goals and two assists?

Spit and polish
Away from Mo Salah, there’s another contract update at Liverpool, as ‘Luis Diaz sends Trent Alexander-Arnold contract message as Liverpool left with no Mohamed Salah option’.

Now you absolutely know that Luis Diaz has done nothing of the sort, but we’re intrigued by just how low the Liverpool Echo are prepared to stoop.

They even say ‘Alexander-Arnold message becomes obvious’ before the whole shebang collapses early doors with the admission that ‘it’ll take a bit more than the application of some imaginary boot polish to persuade Trent Alexander-Arnold to sign a new contract at Liverpool’.

So the ‘contract message’ is the age-old pretend application of boot polish celebration; Ronaldo apparently received a whole load of ‘contract messages’ when he was at Inter Milan.

It’s a quite common celebration set-piece and yet Jason Burt of the Daily Telegraph asks: ‘What was with the ‘shoe-shine’ celebration as goalscorer Luis Diaz pretended to clean Alexander-Arnold’s boots?’

Alright, old man.

But the story did not end with the celebration from the Echo, who claim that ‘Trent Alexander-Arnold shows true Liverpool feelings with three-word message after Luis Diaz moment’.

Was it ‘I’m staying, la’ or ‘Liverpool for life’? After all, that would show his ‘true feelings’.

You know what doesn’t show his ‘true feelings’ but only that Alexander-Arnold can read a Premier League table?

Well if we didn’t know how Trent felt about Liverpool before…

The Echo feel the need to explain, writing: ‘The England international is, of course, referring to the Reds spending Christmas at the top of the Premier League table.’

Oh, we thought he was referring to Wham!’s festive classic. It’s so hard to separate popular music chart chat with a ‘three-word message’ that shows his ‘true feelings’…