What Mamadou Sakho Needs to Do to Earn His Liverpool Redemption

Mamadou Sakho's decision to leave Anfield prior to Liverpool's 1-1 draw against Everton on Saturday has split opinion amongst Reds fans, but either way there is some making up to do for the French defender.

Sakho, upon discovering he had been dropped from the substitutes bench in favour of Kolo Toure, decided his working day was done and left the ground swiftly.

Some took it as a negligence of his responsibilities as a professional footballer.

Whilst others took a more human-natured approach to the 24-year-old's decision.

Either through a guilty conscience of his own or via a quiet work from his own or the club's PR team, an apology followed later in the day.

Whether you emphasise with Sakho or not, his decision won't be taken lightly by Brendan Rodgers, who witnessed a huge improvement in defensive cohesion against the Blues with Martin Skrtel and Dejan Lovren at centre-back.

The Northern Irishman takes pride in the group of players he assembled and has often spoken of his pride that the whole squad are contributing to the success of the starting XI.

Little over a year ago, he started the 2013-14 by hailing the togetherness he saw at the club, declaring, "There's a camaraderie and a togetherness there. Long may it continue," as per David Anderson of the Daily Mirror.

What followed was a togetherness in Liverpool's positive approach to attacking the Premier League's top four, which resulted in missing out on the title by just two points.

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Sakho's walk out could be seen as an unsettling of that regime, and rings alarm bells both for player and squad under a period of under-performance and high pressure for Liverpool.

In essence, it was simply negativity that the club did not need right now.

Nevertheless, dwelling on such occurrences is not proactive either, and now Sakho must take note of why he was dropped from the squad and readjust his performance or attitude.

The French international not only has bags of potential, but has already proved himself with numerous solid performances in the Premier League.

He made two defensive errors in the whole of last season, neither of which led to a goal, amounting to 0.12 defensive errors per 90 minutes, as per Squawka.

Furthermore, he has shown he can be a commanding presence aerially and on the ground, whilst his eagerness to come out of defence with the ball has move the defensive line higher up.

His consistently impressive performances at international level also further his case against his critics—recently handling the hassle of Spain forward Diego Costa.

Some may, therefore, be baffled as to why the £18 million signing from Paris Saint-Germain has had such a stop-start beginning to his career at Anfield.

Only Rodgers and his backroom staff will truly know why the decision was made to drop Sakho in favour of Toure—any other reasoning is simply speculation.

Whatever it is, whether elements of his training or simply understanding with teammates, this mini-saga should further push Sakho to improve and compete for not only his squad place, but to break back into the Liverpool first team.