Few expected that the contract saga involving Liverpool, Virgil van Dijk, Mohamed Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold would end well for the Anfield club, but it sounds like the Reds have just about got it right in the end.
Yes, Alexander-Arnold may be about to leave, but if Liverpool can afford to lose any of those three players, it is him. Conor Bradley has emerged as a viable first-team alternative to Alexander-Arnold over the last year or so; viable alternatives to Van Dijk and Salah, Liverpool does not have.
Of course, Liverpool fans are disappointed that one of their own has decided the grass is greener elsewhere, but one-club men are not as common now as they were then. Were Alexander-Arnold not to have agreed to leave this summer, he would have probably agitated for a move in the future.
What is clearly unpalatable is that a player with a market value in excess of $80 million is leaving for free, with Alexander-Arnold set to be the main beneficiary from the deal. The England international is set to pocket an eight-figure signing on fee, which will be spread over the lengthy of his already-lucrative contract in the Spanish capital, and that is a major reason why many Liverpool fans are angry — they feel like Alexander-Arnold is taking money from Real Madrid that Madrid should instead be paying to Liverpool for his services.
While bitterness around Alexander-Arnold’s impending exit will likely linger for some time, fans can have few complaints about the outcomes of the Van Dijk and Salah contract sagas. Negotiations with both players have gone on for some time, and there was some concern among supporters that the lack of updates in recent months suggested the news was going to be bad, but that is not the case.
Both players are on the brink of signing new contracts, and the length of both deals suggest that Liverpool was right to take its time with negotiations. Van Dijk and Salah are expected to sign two-year extensions, which is as good a result as the club could have hoped for given the age of both players.
Liverpool tends to tread carefully when negotiating contract extensions with players over the age of 30, and Salah originally wanted a three-year deal which would’ve taken him beyond his 36th birthday.
It would have been easy for Liverpool to bow to outside pressure and give him that when he was plundering goal after goal earlier in the season, but no rash decisions were made and a two-year contract for a world-class 32-year-old in Salah’s shape is about as low-risk as it gets when it comes to handing out contracts to ageing players.
The same applies to Van Dijk, another world-class operator, who has made it clear all along that his preference was to extend his Liverpool contract.
Ahead of what could be a transitional summer — which seems remarkable to say about a title-winning team — it was imperative for Liverpool to keep hold of its two most experienced players, and it has managed to do exactly that.
