John Henry's RUTHLESS reaction to his 'last' Mo Salah

Is history repeating itself for Liverpool owner John Henry? Here's how reacted to his 'last' Mo Salah - and it was ruthless.

Mo Salah shocked everyone, just about, with his post-match comments at the weekend. Salah made no secret of his feelings after being dropped for three consecutive matches - two of which he didn’t even get on the pitch.

The Egyptian feels he’s being scapegoated as Liverpool desperately try to find a reason behind their awful form. Salah is unquestionably the only key player to have been dropped for an extended period, though Andy Robertson has arguably also faced that treatment.

But there’s also a sense that media pressure has got to Salah. There have been claims from all around the world that he’s the reason why certain signings haven’t worked out and that his lack of form to kick off the campaign has held Liverpool back.

Though, that argument only really works if you ignore the fact that no one has really found their best form and most other players have been quite poor. Players who have not been dropped for three, now four, consecutive matches.

But no matter what you think of Salah’s arguments or Arne Slot’s decisions, the fact is that this is a difficult situation where Liverpool are at odds with their star player. The winger is the best-paid at the club by some distance and was far and away their best player last season even in a shining team.

So what will they do? Well, we actually have a bit of a clue here because John Henry has recent history with a similar situation at the Boston Red Sox.

Here’s how that went down.

John Henry's previous 'Mo Salah'

The Red Sox had a star player in Rafael Devers - someone they'd signed when he was just 16 and who had been with the franchise in some capacity for 12 years when 2025 rolled around. The Dominican was their best-paid player after a contract signed back in 2023.

Past-tense.

Devers was traded to the San Francisco Giants in June. It followed a breakdown in his relationship with the team after they signed Alex Bregman - someone who played in a similar position to Devers.

But the latter initially refused to alter his position in order to accommodate his new teammate, though he'd later relent. This created problems and those problems only grew when Devers was then asked to change his position once again after an injury to Triston Casas.

He initially refused to shift, telling Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow that he simply wouldn't. That led John Henry to intervene personally - he met with Devers and talked him into changing his position for the team.

Now, Devers did eventually say he'd do that but only the following year.

“They wanted me to play first base," he said, per the Boston Globe. "I told [Henry] they eventually, yes. I could play first base but maybe next year. It was not my fault that players get hurt.

"I felt like if another player got hurt, they would move me again.”

So here was the best-paid player in the team, one who had been with them for a long time, feeling he was being sacrificed unjustly. Ultimately, the 'fix' for the Red Sox was to trade Revers fairly unceremoniously - he was on the team plane when they suddenly finalised the trade and needed to delay takeoff so he could run back in and gather his things.

A ruthless decision, then, that saw the Red Sox move forward without Devers. Bregman, the player who arrived and disrupted things, would be voted an all-star in 2025 but opted out of his contract to become a free agent this off-season.

That feels like a key detail in the end. The Red Sox may end up without either player and knew that was an option back when they traded Devers.

It's debatable, then, whether that trade was for the good of the team or because the Red Sox felt their relationship with the player was beyond fixing. And if that mentality truly is the latter, then Salah's days at Liverpool may be numbered.