While Trent Alexander-Arnold looks set to join Real Madrid on a free transfer in the summer, Liverpool fans continue to keep their fingers crossed that two other players whose contracts expire in June won’t follow him out the door.
Mo Salah and Virgil van Dijk now have exactly three months remaining on their current deals at Anfield, and the club’s window of opportunity to keep the long-serving duo has now become dangerously tight.
However, the ever-reliable David Ornstein reported last week that LFC are ‘optimistic’ that the Egyptian forward and Dutch centre-back will agree to stay put, while trustworthy sources from the winger’s homeland claimed that renewal talks are ‘much more advanced’ than at any previous stage.
Salah keen to stay at Liverpool but doesn’t want short-term contract
Football Insider have now corroborated those reports from Egypt, with the outlet today publishing an article in which it’s stated that the 32-year-old is keen to sign a new contract at Liverpool.
However, there’s one overarching reason for the delay on putting pen to paper, namely a difference in the length of a prospective deal between what the player wants and what the club are prepared to offer.
Anfield chiefs are ‘wary’ of presenting a long-term contract to Salah given his age (he turns 33 in June), but the forward is understood to want more than just a short-term agreement.
(Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)Liverpool should have no issues giving Salah a two-year deal
It would appear from this report – and indeed what was communicated by Egyptian outlet Masrawy in recent days – that Liverpool’s number 11 has no issue with the financial particulars of what the club are offering, and that the length of contract seems to be the one big stumbling block which needs to be overcome.
Salah might be the Reds’ highest-paid player on £350,000 per week (Capology), but it’d be counterproductive for FSG to offer him only a one-year extension (if indeed that is the case), as that’d only see the player’s future circle back to uncertainty in a few short months.
At least if LFC were prepared to commit another two years’ resources to the winger, that’d give Richard Hughes a reasonable amount of breathing space to plan properly for replacing one of the greatest players in the club’s history, one who continues to score at an astonishing rate.
The time will come when the Egyptian King is no longer reaching the same stratospheric levels which have been his norm ever since he joined Liverpool in 2017, but a return of 32 goals and counting this season shows that he’s anything but on the wane.
Whatever the discrepancy might be in the length of contract that Salah wants versus what the club are willing to offer, let’s hope that all parties can reach a happy compromise which’d ensure that the man in the number 11 shirt continues to rip it up at Anfield throughout 2025/26 and ideally beyond!
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