Mohamed Salah leaving Liverpool on a free transfer next summer is now the most likely outcome of his contract standoff.
That’s according to The Mirror, who claim that Salah will now head into his last season at Anfield.
Liverpool owners FSG are reportedly ‘unlikely’ to mee the Egyptian’s wage demands, which mean that his career on Merseyside will enter its ‘final chapter.’
It’s also claimed to be ‘very unlikely’ that Salah will leave Liverpool this summer. However, The Mirror claim that there are rumours of The Reds tentatively putting a £60m price-tag on their talisman just in case of any interest.
£60m for Mo
The most interesting part of this report is surely the rumoured asking price for Salah.
On first glance, it would look a little short. But considering that a player in his exact situation – Sadio Mane – has left for way shy of £60m, maybe it isn’t.
It would hurt to lose Salah on a free transfer next season. Somehow though, it would hurt even more to see such a consistently top performer go for half of his value. He’s still right at the top of his game, so much so that Jurgen Klopp called him ‘exceptional’ via Eurosport in February.
In this instance, perhaps Liverpool can take some heart from the recent Kylian Mbappe saga.
PSG turned down a mammoth bid from Real Madrid at the back end of last summer’s transfer window. Throughout the season they got to work on Mbappe in a bid to persuade him to sign a new deal.
The situation was almost critical, but in the end Mbappe chose to stay put where he was happy.
Liverpool can use this example as hope that there is still time for an agreement to be reached. At the moment though, unless Salah agrees to lower his expectations of what the club can pay him, he may very well be off.
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