Liverpool have been sent a message about their decision to award new contracts to Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk
Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk
Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk were both awarded new contracts at Liverpool last season
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Former Celtic manager Gordon Strachan has questioned Liverpool's decision to keep Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk at the club. The Reds are going through a tough spell of results on the pitch, having lost to Nottingham Forest in the Premier League over the weekend.
That defeat was their sixth out of their last seven in the Premier League this season. That form has seen Liverpool fall to 12th place in the league standings, below rivals Everton and Manchester United and are 11 points behind leaders Arsenal.
Last season saw much of the speculation surrounding Liverpool focus on the potential contract extensions of three players. Van Dijk and Salah put pen to paper on fresh terms, while Trent Alexander-Arnold left to join Real Madrid.
Liverpool also spent money in the transfer market with the signings of Alexander Isak, Florian Wirtz, Hugo Ekitike, Milos Kerkez, Jeremie Frimpong, Giorgi Mamardashvili, Giovanni Leoni, Freddie Woodman and Armin Pecsi. Two of those signings saw the Reds agree deals worth more than £100million each.
Strachan has questioned Liverpool's decision to hand Van Dijk and Salah new contracts, while also offering his assessment of some of the signings made by the Reds in the summer. "There's a sense of: ‘What's happened here?’ It could be a lot of things," Strachan told BOYLE Sports, who offer Premier League betting.
"Have Virgil van Dijk and Mohamed Salah overstayed their welcome? Everyone wanted them to stay, and it looked good, but I had reservations.
“I definitely had reservations, just at the time it took to sign their contracts and at the last minute. You've also got to consider that the guys like playing at Liverpool, they love playing at Liverpool. But particularly with Salah. I couldn't see how he was going to do any better.
“So, anything below the magnificent level that he's been producing over the last five or six years, there's got to be negativity about it. I don't think anybody in football could have thought he's going to get better in the next couple of years. So there's always got to be a negativity about any performance under that magnificent level he's been at.
“Sometimes you've got to be brutally honest, like Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, who knew when it was time for people to go.
“So I think that might be a little problem at Liverpool at the moment. That might be one of the problems because they haven't got a lot of good players. You've got to say that, don't you? You look at the players they've brought in, have they come up to scratch at the moment? Maybe not.
“So there's a lot going on at that club. With all the signings we all thought it could only get better, but it hasn’t been the case.
“The whole of the English football world thought: ‘Oh, they've signed somebody for 120 million, another one for 120 million, and spent 50 million for a left-back.’ It's not what we imagined was going to happen, that's for sure.”
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