John Barnes has dismissed any idea of their being disharmony in the Liverpool camp after Sadio Mane’s furious outburst after being substituted in the 3-0 win against Burnley at Turf Moor on Saturday.
Mane was fuming with Mohamed Salah after the Egypt international failed to pass him the ball when he had an opportunity to score not long before he was taken off by Jurgen Klopp.
Although the Senegal forward was clearly upset, Barnes reckons that a line will have been drawn under it now and it will be as though nothing happened.
“The most important thing is there’s no hangover from it, and with Liverpool there won’t be,” Barnes told Sky Sports.
“He’s human and Jurgen Klopp said himself ‘these things happen’, but there will be no spill-over from that.
“Ideally you don’t want that to happen because you don’t want to create disharmony, but that’s not going to be an issue.”
OPINION
Barnes is right, it’s very unlikely that Mane, Salah or anyone else at Liverpool are stewing over this. It is likely that the closely-knit dressing room are just laughing and joking about the whole incident now because at the end of the day, you cannot blame Mane for being angry at being denied the chance to score. It happens. The best forwards in the game just want to stick the ball in the back of the net and when a team-mate denies you a chance to do that, it is a whole lot more annoying than when an opposition player does it. Even if it was still an issue between Mane and Salah, they will not be spending the coming days together due to their respective international duties with Senegal and Egpyt. However like Barnes says, that’s not something that needs to be worried about. Both players will return from international duty at the end of next week and it will be like nothing happened.
