The Athletic FC.

Welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Ayo Akimu Lerre.

After nine years and over 250 goals, Mo Salah is set to leave Liverpool.

The Egyptian king has helped fire the Reds to Champions League and Premier League glory.

So how much of a loss will this be for Liverpool? And also, how did they go about replacing him? All right, with us for this one, we've got our football correspondent, David Ornstein. We've also got Olly Kay with us as well. All right, David, on Tuesday night, Mo Salah confirmed on Instagram, this would be his last season at Anfield.

Was this a bit of a shock for you?

To me, it wasn't.

No, it was something we expected to come at some point.

Memories tend to evaporate quickly sometimes.

How bad it was in December when he came out post-leads and kicked off.

And then the discussion was, as he played his last game for Liverpool,

he invited his family over for the last match at Amfield before going off to the Afcon.

And that was supposedly a farewell.

Liverpool's stance was always that he's not leaving.

And especially after the Alexander Isaac injury, they wanted him to stay.

They needed him at that point to stay.

But it's a two-year contract, but there's a conversation to be had and every chance that there'll be a parting of the ways. To me, that felt a matter of when, not if he was going to be going.

What was surprising is that nobody knew that it was going to be announced on that particular day

by Sala, by Liverpool. And it's more a seismic end to the era than a seismic shock that he's going.

And was this a mutual decision then?

Information coming from Anfield suggests that this was Mo Salas' call, that he instigated this.

But I think you need to look

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