Mohamed Salah is one of the world’s best-paid players, and it is a measure of how bleak things have been at Liverpool that he didn’t even get on the pitch in Sunday’s win over West Ham.
Arne Slot has since suggested that the Egyptian King’s absence from the starting line-up at the London Stadium reflected both fixture congestion and tactical considerations.
“Mo has had an unbelievable career and will have a very good future at this club because he’s such a special player. But when you have four games in 10 days then you have to decide once in a while on a certain lineup,” the Liverpool boss said, as quoted by The Guardian.
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“The way they set up with a full-back that’s constantly high and a winger who’s inside, I thought this would help the team.”
Mohamed Salah looks forlorn in Liverpool's Champions League meeting with PSV Eindhoven
Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images
In April, when Mohamed Salah was at the peak of his powers and had just renewed his £400,000-a-week deal until at least the end of 2026-27, the current situation was virtually unthinkable.
However, at 33 years old, there were some who thought that FSG would not bow to the attacker’s demands for a new contract. At least, not at the terms he was said to be requesting.
But while Fenway Sports Group had, until this summer, acquired a reputation as being relatively frugal operators in the transfer market, they have been less restrained when it has come to the wage bill.
In the last full published financial year, 2023-24, Liverpool’s payroll was a club-record £386m. Simply put, FSG recognise the correlation between wages and glory on the pitch, which is far more accurate predictor of success than transfer spending – though that certainly helps too!
Chart plotting Liverpool Squad Cost - wages plus amortisation - against revenue
Liverpool – Squad Cost vs Revenue Credit: Adam Williams/Rousing The Kop/GRV Media
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And given that was a season when the Reds were outside the Champions League, we can expect that figure to have soared in 2024-25, even before bonuses for winning the Premier League are accounted for.
The full financial results will be released in the spring.
The football finance analyst Gregg Cordell, author of the Vanity, Sanity and Realty newsletter, forecasts that the wage bill will reach £401m.
Are Liverpool getting good value for money from their wage bill? 🤔
With a predicted payroll of over £400m in '24-25, only Man City pay their players more.
With LFC’s 2024/25 financial period complete, I’ll provide some initial/rough *estimates* (w/ full write-up this weekend).
Key P&L metrics estimated to improve notably vs 2023/24:
– Rev of £714m (+£100m; +16.3%)
– Adj EBITDA of £140m (+£70m)
– Pre-tax profit of £48m (+£105m) pic.twitter.com/F034r55vXO
— Greg Cordell (@gregorypcordell) June 10, 2025
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For context, that would have been second only to Manchester City (£413m) in the last financial year and almost double the amount paid to players and staff by Tottenham.
With Salah specifically, we actually have an almost unprecedented level of insight into his earnings outside of his Liverpool contract thanks to a Harvard Business School case study he sanctioned in tandem with his agent, Ramy Abass Issa, in 2023.
In the paper, it was revealed that the Liverpool great earns just as much from brand endorsements and image rights as he does from his basic salary at Anfield. In total, Salah trousers around £1m per week.
And in exclusive conversation with Rousing The Kop, University of Liverpool football finance lecturer Kieran Maguire has highlighted how new UK financial legislation threatens to reduce footballers’ take-home pay in this department.
Mohamed Salah and other Premier League stars face pay cut after Rachel Reeves’ budget
While the headline figures suggest that Salah earns a flat £400,000 per week, the reality is more nuanced.
For starters, there’s basic and variable pay, i.e., performance-related clauses, loyalty bonuses, inflation-adjusted income etc.
And in terms of the cost to the club, it’s not clear whether that £400,000-a-week includes employer National Insurance contributions. If not, then that £400,000 becomes a £460,000 expense to Liverpool.
On top of that, an unknown portion of Salah’s wage is paid in image rights, for which the club pays in order to use Salah’s likeness and brand in commercial activities, such as sponsorship launches and retail campaigns.
How much would you want Liverpool to sell Mohamed Salah for?
Cristiano Ronaldo to Juventus (£99.2m)
Harry Kane to Bayern Munich (£86.4m plus add-ons)
Neymar to Al-Hilal (£77.6m plus add-ons)
Casemiro to Manchester United (£60m plus add-ons)
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Image rights are big business, and Salah is one of the planet’s most commercially attractive players, especially given his monolithic status in the Arab world. Personally, he has signed deals with the likes of Adidas, Pepsi, Uber and DHL, and his agent says these partnerships are worth up to £6m per year.
His commercial activities in the UK, as well as his investment portfolio, are housed in Salah UK Commercial Limited, whose accounts for the last financial year showed assets of £37m in total.
However, changes in how the UK tax authorities treat image rights mean that his ultimate income from Liverpool could be set to decline.
A line in the new budget overseen by Labour chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves reads: ‘The government will legislate to clarify the tax treatment of image rights to ensure that all image rights payments related to an employment are treated as taxable employment income and subject to income tax, and employer and employee National Insurance contributions’.
Maguire explained to Rousing The Kop: “At present, there is a rule of thumb from HMRC that they allow a ceiling of 20 per cent of earnings to go via an image rights company, which is then charged corporation tax.
“If you are a player like Salah on, say, £400,000, that’s £80,000 per week which isn’t currently being taxed at 45 per cent, i.e., the top rate.
“45 per cent of £80,000 is £36,000. Multiply that by the 52 weeks in the year and you get to almost £2m per year in tax which is currently not being paid at 45 per cent.
“That instead goes to the image rights company, which is taxed on profits as opposed to earnings. You’re paying tax on profits at 25 per cent, i.e. 20 per cent lower than the 45 per cent income tax rate.
A general view of Anfield ahead of Liverpool's Champions League match against PSV Eindhoven
Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images
“But under the new rules, image rights are treated as income, so the rate will be the same. In this £400,000-a-week scenario, you’re losing the best part of £850,000 annually in terms of the tax advantage.
“This is going to be a consideration when Premier League clubs try to recruit this summer. Most players aren’t looking at the total figure; they are looking at net.
“It could make the Premier League less attractive to overseas players than it has been previously. Remember, we had the Beckham tax in Spain which stated that you paid a fixed sum of tax regardless of what you earned. They saw that as a way of attracting talent.”
Liverpool’s wage bill under new Premier League spending rules
As well as increasing players’ total take-home, the previous treatment of image rights as corporate profits mean Liverpool were exempt from paying National Insurance on that portion of Salah’s pay packet.
So as well as potentially decreasing Salah’s ultimate earnings by around four per cent and nearly £1m, the change in the treatment of image rights for tax purposes might also cost the club a significant six-figure fee in NI contributions.
While Liverpool’s wage bill is one of the highest in world football, their wages-to-turnover ratio has remained steady at around 60-65 per cent throughout the FSG era.
Under the Premier League’s new Squad Cost Ratio (SCR) system, Liverpool will be required to keep first-team wages plus transfer costs to within 85 per cent of revenue plus a three-year average on player sale profits.
That shouldn’t be a problem for the Reds, who are already obliged to meet a 70 per cent threshold across the same metrics under UEFA’s rules.
The new SCR system could, however, have a profound impact on the Premier League clubs attempting to disrupt the orthodoxy in the domestic and European game. That is why six clubs – Bournemouth, Brighton, Brentford, Crystal Palace, Fulham and Leeds United – voted against SCR, while Liverpool nodded it through along with the rest of the so-called ‘Big Six’.
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