Liverpool may be joyfully saying hello to another three years of Mo Salah… but it means I say goodbye to my status as the club’s all-time top scorer in the Premier League!
I’m not saying I was praying he’d leave this summer… but!
I’m a fan, of course, my lad is, too, and I know just how delighted he is that Salah is staying – and I know he doesn’t give a monkey’s about my record, either.
Actually, I’m delighted he’s staying. Regular readers of this column will have picked up on my thoughts that I don’t consider players as legends of any club, unless they show some real passion and commitment to that club.
I know I’m probably in the minority, but I’ve always rejected the idea Luis Suarez and Fernando Torres are Liverpool legends.
Neither of them stuck around long enough to ever be regarded like that.
Both of them tainted their legacy in the manner they left the club, with both of them seeming desperate to go and prepared to screw the club over.
I always thought Salah was in danger of doing that too, with the way things were dragging on over his contract negotiations and the way his agent seemed to be stirring up trouble.
But fair play to him. The bottom line is, he wanted to stay – probably to smash all my records! – and that tells me he wants to become a proper Liverpool legend.
First of all, it makes sense.
As a manager myself these days, I understand you can’t simply go out and give players everything they want, even if, as a fan, that’s exactly what you think should happen.
So Liverpool, like all clubs – all sensible ones anyway – need limits. The bottom line is always, “What is this player worth to the business?” and, from there, you work out whether you can afford to pay it.
Last week when I wrote about Salah, it was clear they were still a long way apart in negotiations. So what happened? I’m told there was a bit of a breakthrough in the last few days concerning the structure of the deal.
I don’t know the full details, but it does seem like he is prepared to take a contract that is heavily stacked towards bonuses.
That’s a good sign because it means he really believes he is going to trigger those bonuses.
Liverpool fans should be happy about that because it means he thinks he’s going to win even more trophies to get those bonuses.
And that is the point – the club will be happy to pay them, too, because it means they are successful and bringing even more money in.
A deal on a basic salary, which keeps the wage structure in place, is important.
Manchester United are in a bit of a mess right now because they didn’t do that.
They paid David de Gea an absolute fortune to keep him, but what did that mean?
Instantly, players such as Paul Pogba want parity. And then others do. Cristiano Ronaldo comes in and wants more than them. Then Pogba wants parity with him.
It’s a vicious cycle and eventually you end up like Barcelona.
They tried it with Lionel Messi, kept paying him more and more, and, rightly, the players who are equally important want pay rises.
Look at where Barca are now. They are still trying to meet all the financial regulations and it means they can’t spend like they used to, can’t give big contracts, either.
United need to look at where they are and think of a reset.
Take a look at Liverpool and see how they make incredibly tough decisions to keep their finances under some sort of control. They looked at Salah and Sadio Mane and made cold, hard decisions.
With Mane, they decided he had already been shifted out from the left by Luis Diaz’s sensational form, pushing him more into the middle.
But did they need to give massive wages to a 30-year-old wide player who was now operating as an admittedly impressive, but makeshift nonetheless, centre-forward? The answer was that there was more value in the risk of replacing him with a player seven years younger, who is a more natural goalscorer.
With Salah, they obviously decided they couldn’t replace his goals just yet.
And they obviously ran all their medical tests and analysis and decided he could sustain the same level for the next three years at least.
Liverpool’s track record in the past five or six years means you have to respect their judgement and those decisions.
Even if I’m gutted Mane has gone… and Salah will stay to get the 11 goals he needs to break my record!
