Should Liverpool drop Isak, Salah, or both to let Ekitike shine?

Arne Slot is facing his biggest decision as Liverpool head coach. He must either drop Mohamed Salah, his team’s highest-profile player, or Alexander Isak, the club-record £125 million summer signing who arrived at Anfield only last month.

Salah and Isak are two of the most respected forwards in world football, with their reputations built by years of consistency, but right now they don’t deserve to be in the Liverpool team.

Their lack of form is primarily down to themselves, but the summer squad upheaval at Anfield that saw seven first-team players arrive for around £450 million and seven leave (including Darwin Núñez and Luis Díaz), plus the tragic loss of Diogo Jota, who was killed in a car accident in July, has also disrupted things to the point that it is affecting all areas of the team.

As such, Slot has other significant issues to address, including how to get the best out of attacking midfielder Florian Wirtz, who has registered no goals and no assists in eight appearances so far for Liverpool since his £100 million transfer from Bayer Leverkusen this summer.

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Left back is also proving to be a problem position for Slot, with £40 million signing Milos Kerkez struggling to justify his billing as Andy Robertson’s long-term successor. And the shaky performances of center backs Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konaté during Sunday’s 2-1 defeat at home to Manchester United highlighted just why Liverpool should have moved more quickly to sign Crystal Palace’s Marc Guéhi before seeing a late £35 million swoop collapse on transfer deadline day.

But while so many problems are beginning to mount for Slot, the biggest one centers on Salah and Isak. When two seemingly undroppable players fail to merit their place in the team, their ongoing presence in it hints at a coach who just can’t bring himself to make a call that would reverberate beyond the Liverpool dressing room.

Wednesday’s Champions League trip to Germany to face Eintracht Frankfurt offers Slot a soft landing. He could take Salah and Isak out of the side and point to a need for rotation, because the format of the league phase of the competition means Liverpool can afford a defeat against the Bundesliga side without too many long-term consequences. (Though if they did record a fifth straight loss, it would be the first time since September 1953.)

Slot can also restore Hugo Ekitike to the team, allowing the France international to play against his former club just three months after leaving for Liverpool in a £69 million transfer. But resting and rotating his players for a Champions League game would only be a case of delaying the inevitable.

The true test of the manager’s readiness to upset his star players will be when Liverpool face games of a similar magnitude to the United fixture, such as their Champions League clash against Real Madrid next month, or the Premier League trip to Manchester City five days later.

Ekitike, 23, has been Liverpool’s most productive forward so far this season, with five goals and one assist in 11 appearances, but he has not started any of the team’s past three league games — all of which ended in defeat. A one-match suspension forced him to miss the first game in that span, away to Crystal Palace, but Slot has not restored him to the side since, selecting Isak and Salah instead.

Isak has now played seven games for Liverpool since his deadline day move from Newcastle, but he has struggled to match Ekitike’s impact, either through goals or work rate, and has registered just one goal and an assist.

Salah, meanwhile, has managed just three goals and three assists in 11 appearances, with a Premier League output of two goals and two assists. The 33-year-old’s defensive contribution (or lack thereof) down the right side has also resulted in Liverpool’s right back being exposed in several games.

But Salah has never been the hardest worker when it comes to tracking back. His value to Liverpool has always been his ability to win games out of nothing with his goal threat, and his defensive shortcomings were often mitigated by the energy and tenacity of Nunez, Diaz and Jota.

Nobody worked harder for Liverpool than Nunez, even if his wayward finishing was a frustration that ultimately led to his summer exit to Al Hilal. Diaz, now at Bayern Munich, was also a tireless runner, while Jota’s pressing in the final third offered Liverpool further benefits and threat.

Without those three, only Cody Gakpo is offering Liverpool the work rate that made their forward line so successful last season. As a consequence, Salah and Isak’s failure to do the same is becoming a problem as big as their lack of goals.

Had the two players scored at their expected rate this season, those half-hearted jogs instead of sprints and energetic pressing would not have been such a problem. But a combined lack of goals and work ethic means that Isak and Salah have become a recurring headache for Slot.

Perhaps Slot is attempting to play both forwards into form, but whatever his justification, their presence in the side is now hurting the team, especially when their selection leads to the impressive Ekitike having to accept a place on the bench.

On Sunday, Slot used the old managerial tactic of complaining about United’s “low block and long balls” to deflect the focus away from his team selection, but the Isak and Salah issue won’t go away. Solving it is not simply a case of taking them out of the side and hoping that their replacements do a better job because Slot also needs to get the mechanics of his team working much better.

But neither Isak nor Salah are doing enough to deserve a starting spot for Liverpool. Dropping one, or both, might be the jolt that everyone on the team needs.