No I don’t think there’s a cat in hells chance of Salah ending up at Newcastle. If he doesn’t re-sign with us it’s because we’ve refused to pay him what he deserves (not necessarily what he wants) or he just wants to play at a specific club or in a specific league for a few years before the end of his career.
Joining up to push Newcastle’s train seems unlikely because he’ll be retiring before he gets to the station.
The likes of Coutinho though with less obvious options available to him could easily be tempted.
For NUFC, with their new found wealth, I would buy de-fibs for all their fan access points…then think about players…if they think about it in January, they will have a fair idea of where they’re going to finish in the PL…then see who/which players want to join 'em…hard choices for those so wealthy…
And that’s the context of what he deserves. He’s currently the best player at THIS club and deserves to be paid the most, but not so much that it breaks our entire wage ‘structure’.
If we offer him a ‘fair’ deal I’m confident he will re-sign - unless he just wants to play elsewhere for his own personal reasons. If we try and cheap out on him, then that might be enough for him to consider if he’s be better off elsewhere.
So we could offer him a “fair” deal and pay him what he “deserves” (being the highest paid player at the club) and yet he could still refuse to sign and end up going elsewhere.
So him refusing to sign a new deal may not be because we refused to pay him what was fair or what he “deserved”?
sounds very Wijnaldum-ish. except he wasn’t going to be the highest-paid at the club. he’s cashing in now, and he must have a photographer following around as his media consultant as he’s always on social media. it’s becoming a bit much, TBH.
I’m pretty sure we will be able to come to a mutually agreeable financial arrangement for Mo’s new contract. He is the best in the world and scoring for fun for us. We can, and should, extend ourselves to make it happen.
I think the difficulty will be in agreeing the length of the deal. To my mind we can reasonably expect Mo to be in peak condition until 34, then reassess. It’s not an exact science, but the principle is that the club won’t want to pay world class wages if the player is on the downswing, so length of contract will be a consideration.
Another consideration might be the terms of a potential exit. Mo is settled and happy. But he might like to try one more European giant in his peak years, before hanging up his boots. He might be happy to sign a new deal, but maybe part of the negotiation will be the terms of a clause should he want to exit in, say, two years.
I think it is more complicated than just paying Mo the wage he is looking for.
I’m not so sure Wijnaldum is cashing it in now. There seemed to be little demand for him. His deal at Barca wasn’t going to be a big upgrade on what he got here, PSG moved in when it became clear Barca were having real problems getting any of their new players on to the wage bill. He may have accepted that move to save face rather than it paying him substantially more than he was going to here.
Well he could have accepted the offer here… Wasn’t it like 1 year less than he wanted…
Personally I think Klopp was happy he moved on, you look at the midfield now - Elliot, Jones, Keita… They are all playing far more offensive than Gini, even Hendo is struggling with the demands (he looked so much better playing no.6). So an evolution was coming, so maybe Gini knew his minutes were going to be dropped etc.
Gini was a solid player for us. Good, but not great. At that point we offered him what we thought was a fair deal, and he chose to try his hand elsewhere.
As it happens it has helped one or two others get more of a look in here, and as the team continually evolves we are happy enough with that.
And on Gini’s end, between now and the end of his career, he probably won’t have it better than he had it here. It’s a tale of caution in some ways. If you choose to leave this Liverpool team, such is its stature these days… well, the grass likely won’t be greener.
Edit:
What we were paying Gini, compared to what he is getting at PSG, doesn’t tell the story. The comparison I’d want to see is what we offered Gini, in comparison to the wage he is getting at PSG. I bet it’s a lot closer than the figures above.
You are probably right, but I’m just speculating that that is where the difficult part of the negotiation will be. And also length of contract.
Paying the man his money, while it will obviously be a tidy sum, likely won’t be the stumbling block, as he has grown into currently the best in the world at Liverpool, and we will want to reward that.
He’s been there for a few months, doesn’t mean he’s crying for Liverpool if he’s currently out of the side. He got great money and obviously a new winning football project attracted him, nothing wrong with that.
I think Klopp was the least happy with that move. It was more the decision by LFC at the end of the day, we felt it wasn’t the right decision to give him what he wanted and and that’s also okay, we can’t give everyone new contracts and on money they want.
Evolution is one thing, having a good balance of midfielders in terms of different style is something else. We still need enough of the working midfielders (let’s call them like that) to keep our engine going.
We still have some principles that will not change because Harvey Elliott or Curtis Jones played a few good games. Let’s just not rush with conclusions, we are not suddenly turning into Swansea or something.
A Liverpool best XI under Klopp still needs another dynamic option in one of the #8’s in front of Fabinho, at least in the vast majority of games. And we’ll possibly have two in more games than we as fans think. Like probably tomorrow in Madrid. We are actually in the process of finding a consistent performer who would mainly start at LCM, because Fabinho and Hendo will start most games.
Believe what you want, didn’t hear any murmurings of unhappiness in all his time here (6 years)… He’s been there 2 months and already reports in the media he’s unhappy.
So yes, looking at our team all laughs and smiles and him sat on the bench and when he does play trying to cover half a pitch to cover the “superstars”… Yes I think he does regret leaving.
