Steven Gerrard on Replacing Mohamed Salah at Liverpool

Steven Gerrard knows better than most what it means to lose a talisman at Liverpool. He’s seen great forwards come and go, watched eras end and new ones take shape. So when he talks about the scale of replacing Mohamed Salah, he doesn’t dress it up.

Trying to find another Salah? That, he says, is almost a fantasy.

Speaking on talkSPORT Breakfast, the former Liverpool captain laid out the reality with typical bluntness. “I think the concern, if you’re trying to replace Salah, in terms of like-for-like, I think there are very few out there that you can go and grab. Olise would be one, I would say, but I don’t think he’d be available.”

That last line is the crux of it. Michael Olise may fit the profile in terms of talent and output, but prising him away is another matter entirely.

Gerrard’s wider point, though, was not about one name. It was about a club that has repeatedly rebuilt its attack without mirroring what went before. Liverpool, he argued, rarely go for carbon copies.

He reached back into recent history to make the case. When Sadio Mané departed, Liverpool moved for Luis Díaz – a different type of winger, a different rhythm, but one who could still damage defences from the left. When Luis Suárez left, the club didn’t try to clone him; they pieced together new solutions, new combinations, new ways to score.

“Liverpool’s recruitment team will have different options, and that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll look for a like-for-like,” Gerrard explained. “Liverpool have got a fantastic record of replacing top players that have gone before, so I’ve got every confidence from a recruitment point of view that they’ll have different types of options, not necessarily a like-for-like.”

The non-negotiable, in his eyes, is output. Goals and assists. End product.

“One thing is for certain,” he said, “they have to try and replace some kind of goal involvement in terms of goals and assists, which is extremely difficult, because they’ve been incredible for Liverpool for many years.”

That’s the scale of the task. Not just filling a shirt on the right wing, but replacing a machine of numbers, a player who has defined an era at Anfield.

Yet as Gerrard floated Olise’s name, the response from Germany underlined just how complicated that pursuit would be.

Bayern’s stance on the Frenchman is icy cold and crystal clear: he is not for sale.

Speculation around Liverpool’s interest has bubbled for weeks, but senior figures at the Bundesliga club have moved quickly to shut it down. This is not a club looking to cash in; this is a club intent on keeping one of its crown jewels.

Honorary Bayern president Uli Hoeness went straight at the Liverpool talk last month, and did so with a sting. “If that’s true… I don’t believe it is,” he said, “but Liverpool spent 500 million euros this year and are having a very bad season. So we won’t be contributing to them playing better next year.”

That was more than a denial. It was a statement of competitive intent, and a reminder that Bayern see themselves as rivals on the European stage, not suppliers.

Hoeness framed it as a responsibility to Bayern’s vast support. “We play this game for our fans. We have 430,000 members, we have many millions of fans around the world, and it does them little good if we have 200 million euros in the bank and play worse football every Saturday because of it.”

The message: money in the account means nothing if the team on the pitch is weaker. Bayern are not interested in balancing Liverpool’s rebuild.

Sporting director Max Eberl then stripped away any remaining ambiguity. Speaking to Sport Bild, he underlined just how strong Bayern’s hand is in any negotiation that might come. “Michael has a contract with us until 2029, without a release clause – we’re relaxed.”

No clause. Long deal. No urgency to sell. For Liverpool, that combination turns a dream target into a near-impossible one, at least in the short term.

So Gerrard’s warning stands. There may be very few players in world football capable of stepping into Salah’s shoes, and the one he namechecks as a potential heir is locked down at a club with no intention of helping Liverpool climb again.

Liverpool’s recruitment department has built its reputation on finding the right player at the right moment, even when the obvious names are out of reach. If Salah does move on, they will need to do it all over again – this time with Europe watching to see whether they can conjure another evolution from a position that has defined their modern success.