Credit: Imago

Carla Devine

Tue 25 March 2025 15:00, UK

Liverpool have a big summer ahead of them with several key players out of contract at Anfield at the end of the season.

Arne Slot will have decisions to make over the futures of Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk, while Trent Alexander-Arnold looks set to leave Liverpool for Real Madrid.

With the end of the season edging closer and Liverpool having one hand on the Premier League trophy, the Reds will have to turn their attention to contract conversations.

Simon Jordan moots Salah wage issue for Liverpool

Liverpool have been enjoying the season under Slot with excellent form, taking them 12 points clear at the top of the Premier League table and are likely to win the title.

As a result, the conversations of big contract negotiations have taken a back seat for a lot of the campaign, and the players have been unaffected by this.

However, just before the international break, the Reds were knocked out of the Champions League and lost the Carabao Cup final, which may have sent emotions boiling over.

Van Dijk has started to speak about the frustration he is feeling over his future uncertainty, while reports of Alexander-Arnold’s exit are now surfacing.

After the season he has had, you can’t imagine Liverpool would be keen to let Salah go, but Simon Jordan has suggested they may be between a rock and a hard place.

Speaking live on talkSPORT (25 March), he said: “With Salah, you’ve got a difficult conundrum. Are you going to be put in a position because he’s a free transfer that you’re going to have to pay him the same wages as he’s going to get in Saudi?

“Because if he’s going to get the best part of £1million a week in Saudi, how are Liverpool going to justify that in a squad that’s going to reverberate with that kind of expenditure?

“So when people make these sort of observations that it’s remiss or it could have been dealt with, how do you do it? How do you square that circle? It’s really easy to say what you should do, it’s much more difficult to say how you’re going to do it.

“I think Salah will sign, and I think Virgil van Dijk will sign.”

Liverpool need to secure Salah signing

There has been plenty of debate over the future of these players at Anfield, and some have argued that Salah is not worth spending an increased amount of money on to tie down.

However, if Slot is serious about bringing success to Anfield for a prolonged period, he has to have Salah available to him to do that.

Although he is 32-years-old, he has shown absolutely no signs of slowing down and is in incredible form in the Premier League with a massive role to play in his side’s success.

You can understand what Jordan is saying about the position that the Reds could find themselves in, but given he is still at his best levels, it would be a bit of a shock to see Salah keen on the Saudi route so soon.

Even if he stayed at Liverpool for another two years, the Egyptian would undoubtedly be offered a move to Saudi Arabia further down the line.

Therefore, while Liverpool will have to increase the numbers on the deal to reflect his form, it would be surprising if they had to match such costs to tie him down.