Liverpool FC Team Talk, Gossip, Rumours 2024/25

Re: Islam, saw this today too (although it's old now).

It is possible to be both happy he has signed and still hold the view that he was being greedy. We will not know why he has signed now when by all accounts we have been offering him £350k per week since they broke off the negotiations in December. If it is because he is getting more base salary compared to bonuses then I don't see how it shows it wasn't about money.

Mo’ money, Mo Salah.

comparing Mo and Pogba is like comparing a Ferrari with a lemon

There's also the issue that the player didn't have a major impact at the African Cup of Nations and his participation in the tournament affected his form for the remainder of the season. And Mane who reportedly had demanded parity with Salah's contract has left the club. It's possible that such issues impacted on how things played out but I have my doubts.

When the subject came up in interviews since January, Salah basically said that he didn't want to be distracted by contract talk and was focused on doing what he could for the team to achieve its goals for the season, the contract would be looked at when the season was over. Funnily enough that is exactly what happened. From the FFP perspective, the 2021/22 season ended on June 30th and the new season began the following day. The announcement just happened to occur on July 1st - I doubt the timing was by coincidence.

Last week there was a nonsense rumor that the club were willing to listen to offers of £60M for Salah, surprisingly there was no media speculation regard clubs making a move for the player. This would lead me to believe that such speculation was total BS and may have occurred because somebody misheard something regarding the potential value of his contract. The £55M contract is very close to the supposed £60M valuation and it's not unheard of for the media types to inflate such numbers slightly.

The whole saga reinforces the idea that none of the ITK media personas actually know anything other than what the club wants them to know. Everything that has appeared in the media has been speculation that generates clicks and advertising revenue. Salah's contract is another potential bump in the road that has been removed for the forthcoming season and that's the best outcome.

Packet of tayto and 20 major plus incentives I think.

That's not fair on him, he is a very exciting young player who suffered a terrible injury when he was breaking into the team, he recovered fast but it would be expected for confidence to return slowly after an injury like that, goals scored isn't the only measure of a player, he has scored as much as becker. He should be an important squad player this season.

That a bad thing?

Sounds like its good for the club, the team and the player.

He’ll have only barely turned 33 when this deal lapses - I doubt he’ll be US or Egypt bound at that stage unless things go quite wrong 😅

Agree he’s likely with us till it expires though, and will then either sign another extension, or else go on to another big club on a free.

Carra has just about made Gary Neville cry on Twitter 🤣 Neville responding like a 10 year old.

”Short period of success” referring to the most successful side in England lol.

such a contrast between legends of clubs. Mo feel good. Ronaldo feel bad.

True, although the latest The Athletic article on Salah signing the contract mentions that he is a big Barcelona fan so not sure he would ever want to go to Madrid, add in the 2 finals he lost to Madrid as well. I only learned this today so not going to claim it as something I knew beforehand. You are right his only option seemed to be Madrid as the others didn't seem viable and with them losing out on Mbappe it seemed to make the most sense.

"He had not been guided by any of his coaches in this pursuit. Indeed, he might have been a Barcelona fan but from afar, he’d seen Cristiano Ronaldo with his Real Madrid shirt off after scoring a goal and realised the way the game was heading. “Mo realised he had to become a machine,” Fathi concluded."

Makes sense that we have signed him to the new contract. He will cost us £54m for the three years in wages if he obtains all the incentives and it would be great for us if he does as it means he is scoring goals. We could not replace him for this amount this summer so it made sense to keep him at the big wage.

The club can probably get away with explaining why others will not get this wage to the circumstances and seeing as its only fringe players that will need to be resigned - Firmino and Keita and the others have signed their new contracts already - it is something that could have been done by the club. It is still a lot of money to be spent on one player though. Hope the predictions of him not slowing down until his late 30's is true.

I thought keita and firmino only have a year left, when did they sign new contracts?

I was trying to say they are the 2 players that are in contract talks by all reports, or at least ones you would think would be in contract talks (not sure for Firmino by talks are going on with Keita). We have signed the other players that are deemed important to extensions before Salah.

While I agree we are weaker on paper as opposed to how the season finished, Diaz was absolutely Mane's replacement. It's on the record we didn't want to sign him until summer but we had to move in January cos Spurs did. That gave us a problem over where to play the two of them hence Mane moving central.

Many had written Mane off last season until that move and his Afcon success but I was quite happy with his output even before the move. As much as Diaz looks a player he's going to have to significantly increase his goals output to replace what Mane brought, even the so called poorer version of Sadio last season brought 9 goals in the first half of the season as opposed to 4 from Diaz in the second half.

Much to look forward to this season to see how we go forward from here but it's been mentioned in a few Salah articles that a change in formation is likely to fit our new attacking options in.

....

Dortmund have been trying to offload Can for over a year - he played more minutes as a defender than a midfielder last season. His fitness and motivation have not been at the levels they should be. At 33, Witsel was a more mobile player than 27/28 year old Can last season. They've signed Salih Ozcan from Koln to replace Witsel. Keita would be an adequate replacement for Bellingham as a box to box midfielder, an issue is likely to be whether he would want to return to the Bundesliga to play for any club other than Bayern.

Few twitter rumours this morning that Firminio might leave in this window

He works hard for the team, great defensively and link up play forward but feel given the position he is playing the fact that he had such special players around him that defence had to prioritise his goal return is disappointing, can't have it everyway I suppose, I am not trying to criticise him.