Liverpool has responded to Mohamed Salah’s last contract offer

Liverpool has responded to Mohamed Salah’s last contract offer

Liverpool sold Sadio Mane and replaced him with Darwin Nunez because they were unwilling to match his demands to become the club’s highest paid in order to send a strong message to Mohamed Salah in his contract negotiations.

The way Liverpool handled Mane’s contract demands for Salah and his contract negotiations sends a strong message.

Mane, like Salah, has a year left on his Anfield contract and was apparently looking for a new deal for around £400,000 per week.

Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah (Photo Credit: Getty Images)

His reasoning was that as one of the best players in the Premier League, he should be paid similarly to Kevin De Bruyne and Cristiano Ronaldo.

However, his case ignored Liverpool’s well regulated wage structure, with Virgil van Dijk earning about £220,000 per week as the club’s top earner.

Liverpool does not rely on a sovereign wealth fund from a Middle Eastern country to fund them, and they have always been careful not to overspend.

Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t afford to pay Mane £400,000 a week, and Salah is in the same boat.

Salah’s club, like Mane’s, argues that he should be given a new contract that represents his standing as one of the finest players in the world. He, like Mane, wants roughly £400,000 per week, according to his camp, which is the going wage for a player of his caliber.

However, Liverpool, like Mane, cannot afford to offer him such a contract because it would destabilize their wage structure, resulting in players like van Dijk, Thiago Alcantara, and Alisson banging on their door demanding similar pay increases.

That’s why they grudgingly transferred Mane to Bayern Munich for £35.1 million, where he’ll reportedly earn £360,000 per week, but only after signing Nunez from Benfica for a club-record £85 million.

Nunez offers Liverpool bargaining power in their Salah contracts, and they’ve already replaced him and Mane with the Uruguayan and Luis Diaz. There is no longer a sense of impending doom if Liverpool cannot reach an agreement to keep Salah.

Diaz should be able to maintain his rapid growth since joining Liverpool in January, while Nunez has already demonstrated that he can replace Salah’s goals. In comparison to Mane, Salah, and Roberto Firmino, who are all in their thirties, he is the right age at 22.

Salah has stated that he will not be leaving next season, shutting out a similar deal to Mane’s this summer.

He may believe this strengthens his bargaining position because it gives Liverpool only six months to pay him what he wants before he is free to begin talks with international clubs about a Bosman move in January.

Liverpool, on the other hand, has demonstrated that they are unlikely to blink based on their conduct over the last seven days. They will not go overboard and will only offer Salah what they believe they can afford to pay him.

If he continues to say no, they will believe that the £64 million they spent for Nunez up front was a better long-term investment.

In other news, (Video); Watch Sadio Mané send Liverpool a Mohamed Salah warning as Robert Lewandowski plan emerges