Jamie Carragher is fearful that Liverpool’s sobering week prior to the international break could have repercussions in terms of keeping hold of two crucial players.
As every Reds fan knows all too well by now, Mo Salah and Virgil van Dijk have just over three months remaining on their respective contracts at Anfield, with no discernible sign of an imminent resolution for either of them (or for Trent Alexander-Arnold, who’s in the same boat).
This time two weeks ago, Arne Slot’s side still had ambitions of winning three trophies this season. That’s now been whittled down to one after Champions League elimination by Paris Saint-Germain and the Carabao Cup final defeat to Newcastle.
What has Carragher said about Salah’s and Van Dijk’s contracts?
Speaking on It’s Called Soccer!, Carragher suggested that the double disappointment could prompt Liverpool to reinforce their belief that the terms they’re prepared to offer to Salah and Van Dijk are fair, and that they may be reluctant to go much (or any) higher in order to meet their apparent demands.
The pundit said: “Do you know what worries me, not from their point of view, more from the club’s point of view? Van Dijk and Salah have almost come out and said they want to stay.
“My feeling and worry is, it kept feeling like Salah and Van Dijk were winning the PR battle when Liverpool were top of the league, winning every game in the Champions League, talking about trebles, going to do this, going to do that.
“In the last week, I hope this isn’t the case, but maybe the people at the club are going ‘Is this is a little sign of things to come in the future? Is Salah being off form or is this the future of Salah?’. If they don’t win as much, are they in a stronger bargaining position or are the club right to say, ‘Hang on, we think you’re only worth this’?
“You’ve won the league, we haven’t won the the Champions League, you haven’t won the Ballon d’Or. I was actually thinking this means the club are maybe not going to shift the goalposts at all or maybe only slightly.
“Imagine Liverpool win the league, the Champions League, Salah’s the Ballon d’Or. It’s ‘give him what he wants’, all that again, so I think the club will look at that and think their offer’s right.”
Liverpool torn between pragmatism and sentiment
Without knowing the finer details of what Salah and Van Dijk are seeking in order to extend their Liverpool contracts, it’s hard to determine which side is right or wrong in this long-running soap opera between players and club.
What we do know is that they’re the two highest earners in the current squad on £350,000 and £220,000 per week respectively (Capology), they’ll turn 33 and 34 respectively in the summer, and they’re still performing to world-class levels at Anfield (even if the Egyptian’s recent displays have been below his best).
LFC tend not to bow to sentiment when it comes to contractual decisions, and the return of Michael Edwards to FSG in the guise of CEO of Football further indicates that any such activity will be data-driven rather than guided by the tidal wave of social media discourse.
Liverpool have displayed a canny knack of letting players leave at the right time – Philippe Coutinho, Gini Wijnaldum, Sadio Mane and Bobby Firmino all had their best footballing years while on Merseyside – and objectively one could argue whether handing lucrative new deals to two men approaching their mid-30s flies in the face of practical logic.
However, the gamble of keeping Salah and Van Dijk on big money and potentialy seeing their levels decline seems far lesser than the risk of letting them leave for nothing this summer and spending large sums on positional replacements of inferior quality.
The fate of that duo (and Trent) will be decided one way or the other in the coming weeks, as the captain has indicated in recent days. Let’s just hope that, when the moment of truth comes, it’s good news for the Reds.
