TalkSport pundit and former Liverpool player Danny Murphy has given his view on Mohamed Salah following reports about his contract.
The 29-year-old is currently entering a crucial period when it comes to his time at Anfield, as he is entering the final two years of his current deal, meaning that he could be sold next summer in order for the club to avoid losing him on a free transfer in 2023.
A report over the weekend from The Mirror seemed to suggest that the Egyptian would demand as much as £500k per week in order to sign a new deal for Jürgen Klopp’s men, which would be more than double his current salary as well as that of the club’s current highest-paid player, Virgil van Dijk (as per SpotRac).
Murphy spoke about the situation on TalkSport, and claimed that whilst Salah was important to Liverpool, he didn’t envision a situation where he would be earning that much more money than anyone else at the club:
“You don’t want him getting to a situation where there’s a year left. There’s no point letting that happen. You protect the asset – and why wouldn’t you protect the asset, he’s been absolutely phenomenal for Liverpool. He’s the top goalscorer every season and he’s vital to what Liverpool are trying to achieve, which is regaining the title. So I would imagine communication will be starting.
“He’s 29 and he’s, by all accounts, one of the top two or three paid at a club. If he becomes the top-paid player at Liverpool, no problem to me – deserves it, he’s the match-winner, he’s the superstar at the business end of the pitch. But he’s never going to get double what he’s earning now or double what everyone is. That won’t happen at Liverpool, they won’t let that happen.”
TIF Thoughts on Danny Murphy’s comments about Mohamed Salah at Liverpool…
Should Liverpool hand Salah a new contract?
YES
NO
Salah most certainly deserves to be paid well at Liverpool, especially after the impact that he has had, with 127 goals in 206 appearances so far in his time at Anfield. Whether or not he’s the most important, as the absence of Van Dijk perhaps highlighted last season for Liverpool, is very much up for debate, but he’s certainly someone that Liverpool cannot afford to lose.
And because of that importance, you would imagine that Liverpool will be able to find a deal that works for both sides – you just hope that it doesn’t come in a way that causes issues in the dressing room as it has reportedly done at other teams in the past.
As Murphy says, Salah deserves to be on a higher wage and would deserve to be their highest-paid player if it came to that, it just shouldn’t come about in such a way that his pay packet would dwarf the salaries of the other players in the team and cause problems within the squad.
In other news: ‘As things stand at the moment’ – James Pearce drops FSG update at Liverpool