D-day is fast approaching over the Liverpool futures of Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold
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SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 15: Liverpool's and ex-Bournemouth director of Football Richard Hughes during the Premier League match between Southampton FC and AFC Bournemouth at St Mary's Stadium on February 15, 2025 in Southampton, England. (Photo by Robin Jones - AFC Bournemouth/AFC Bournemouth via Getty Images)
Liverpool sporting director Richard Hughes is spinning a lot of plates(Image: Robin Jones - AFC Bournemouth/AFC Bournemouth via Getty Images)
For many, Liverpool could potentially be tasked with replacing the irreplaceable this summer. As long as new contracts for Virgil van Dijk, Mohamed Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold remain unsigned, they edge ever nearer to walking away as free agents.
The prospect of losing all three is an unthinkable one for a club whose charge towards a second league title in five years has been powered largely by the efforts of the trio. But as April creeps ever closer, a resolution seemingly remains some distance away.
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Replacing all three, from a wage bill perspective, is at least doable. Salah is the highest-paid player of all time at around the £350,000-a-week mark, which is a sum that can even soar past the £400,000 barrier due to incentivised targets around goals.
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The weekly sum earned by Van Dijk is less clear, although speculation places the Liverpool captain as a player who picks up between £200,000 and £220,000 every week. Alexander-Arnold is thought to be slightly further back in the pay scale but undoubtedly still one of the highest earners.
For a club whose wage bill now stands at £378m, according to UEFA's latest European Club Finance and Investment Landscape study, released earlier this month, the absence of Salah, Van Dijk and Alexander-Arnold on the balance sheet would be a significant boost from a purely financial perspective.
Liverpool recently announced a pre-tax loss of £57m and the wage bill accounts for around 61.5% of the overall revenue, which was confirmed as £614m. In a report published earlier this month, UEFA guidelines state: "For the first time, clubs are subject to a squad cost rule to apply better control over player wages and transfer costs.
"The new rule limits spending on player and coach wages, transfers and agent fees to 70% of club revenue. We will roll out the new threshold progressively: 90% in the 2023/24 season and 80% in 2024/25, before applying the permanent 70% ceiling from 2025/26. Breaches will result in predefined financial penalties as well as sporting measures."
The departures of Van Dijk and Salah, in particular, would bring down that 61.5% figure significantly. To take a conservative estimate of the skipper's wage packet, £200,000 a week works out at £10m a year, while Salah, at £350,000, would sheer £17.5m off it. That means the Reds would reduce their bottom line to £350m, which is a significant saving.
Alexander-Arnold's departure could also save the club an extra £9.3m annually, if his reported £180,000 salary is accurate.
Losing all three would bring Liverpool's overall wages-to-revenue ratio down to a more manageable 55%, which is comfortably under the 70% limit UEFA are seeking to eventually impose, leaving the club with plenty of room to maneuver going forward in the process.
Describing such deals in cold, hard financial terms, however, does a huge disservice to the entire point of football and there would be an understandable pushback at both the club and their owners Fenway Sports Group if they were to lose all three players purely for the sake of savings.
It is why replacing all three is mission impossible for the recruitment department and Liverpool's chances of becoming champions of either Europe or England next season would be lessened considerably if they lose them, regardless of how they are replaced or who by.
But if it is black and white financials that is driving these negotiations from the club's perspective, then figures from influential football website Transfermarkt should be cause for concern.
According to that particular site, Alexander-Arnold is currently the most valuable of the three, owing largely to the fact that, at 26, he still has the best years of his career ahead of him. Transfermarkt places a valuation of £62m on the England international, which makes him the fourth most valuable player at Anfield behind Dominik Szoboszlai, Luis Diaz and Alexis Mac Allister, who tops the chart at £75m. Van Dijk and Salah, largely due to their respective ages of 33 and 32, are worth £23m and £46m, respectively.
As the website explains: "The Transfermarkt market values are calculated taking into account various pricing models. A major factor is the Transfermarkt community, whose members discuss and evaluate player market values in detail. In general, the Transfermarkt market values are not to be equated with transfer fees.
"The goal is not to predict a price but an expected value of a player in a free market. Both individual transfer modalities and situational conditions are relevant in determining market values. Examples of this are listed below. Transfermarkt does not use an algorithm but instead relies on the wisdom of the community.
"Numerous factors - the most important are listed below - calculate market demand for a player. Demand is defined using a paid transfer fee and salary in the context of the individual and situational parameters outlined below. It should be noted that in bigger leagues there is a heavier focus on transfer fees, while in smaller leagues where there is a greater emphasis on free transfers, the focus is primarily on salaries to determine market values.
"Our goal is to reflect the demand for the player and adjust for special factors/framework parameters in the medium term. At the same time, market values are viewed both individually and in comparison to other players/clubs/leagues. A player with an expiring contract has a transfer value of zero, the market value, however, is calculated independently from his actual transfer value."
So, to use their equation, Liverpool stand to see £131m worth of talent leave the club in Van Dijk, Salah and Alexander-Arnold before any money is invested in bringing in the sort of player that can cover the shortfall of quality and help Arne Slot succeed next season.
But if Liverpool are still determined to reach a scenario that sees all three stay put, Bayern Munich might provide some cause for optimism. The German giants, at various points in recent times, have looked as though all three of Alphonso Davies, Joshua Kimmich and Jamal Musiala would all leave Bavaria in search of pastures new.
Canada international Davies was first to nail his colours to the mast, penning a new deal in early February to end speculation linking him with a move to Real Madrid. Musiala joined him less than a fortnight later before Kimmich rounded off a fine few weeks of negotiating from the German giants earlier this month.
It was the sort of five-week flurry that might give Anfield executives hope in their own attempts to tie down three of the most high profile at the club.