It was mentioned that the Merseyside club were ‘willing to forego a transfer fee further down the line’, rather than agreeing to a deal which, ‘were it to have run for four years, would have been worth over £40m’, combined with additional costs such as agents fees.
That works out at £10m annually, which amounts to just over £192,000 per week.
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Could Liverpool have feasibly agreed to Konate’s demands?
The exits of Mo Salah and Andy Robertson will instantly remove £560,000 from Liverpool’s weekly wage bill (Capology), in which context an extra £42,000 or so for Konate would seem to have been more than feasible.
Had the Reds agreed to the centre-back’s demands, it would’ve brought him up to being the sixth best-paid player at Anfield, with five men in Andoni Iraola’s squad on £200,000 or more per week (Capology).
It didn’t help the 27-year-old’s case that he’d just endured a season which, even when allowing for the devastation of losing Diogo Jota and then his father, saw him turn in too many error-strewn performances, with a few costly mistakes not helping his team.
The frustration for Liverpool is that they now won’t receive a transfer fee for a player who should be in the prime of his career and would’ve fetched a tidy sum if his contract weren’t about to expire, but ultimately the club decided that was preferable to meeting his apparent wage demands.
Let’s just hope that, in time, the Anfield hierarchy don’t live to regret being unable to meet what Konate reportedly wanted in order to remain on Merseyside.