Liverpool owners FSG will have to learn from 'difficult decision' to avoid Mohamed Salah fallout

The sight of Mohamed Salah signing his last contract extension in Mykonos in 2022 now seems like an eternity ago. Fast forward to November 2024 and the issue of the talismanic Egyptian’s future is once again front and centre for Liverpool fans.

On Sunday, the 32-year-old bagged a brace as Liverpool went eight points clear at the top of the Premier League after a 3-2 win over Southampton at St Mary’s. But while the headlines the following day should have been about the Reds’ dominance this season and their very real title aspirations, it is Salah’s future that has been the focus.

Salah, whose contract, like that of Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold, runs out at the end of this season, revealed that he was “disappointed” not to have been offered a new deal by the club yet when speaking to reporters waiting outside the ground yesterday.

READ MORE: Liverpool could already have dream Mohamed Salah successor who is 'a little bit different'

READ MORE: 'Never mind with what he is saying' - Mohamed Salah response clear as FSG sent Liverpool message

“I’m probably more out than in,” he said.

“You know I have been in the club for many years. There is no club like this. But in the end it is not in my hands. As I said before, it is December and I haven’t received anything yet about my future.

“I love the fans. The fans love me. In the end it is not in my hands or the fans’ hands. Let’s wait and see.”

The public declaration of disappointment will have been heard in the boardrooms of Liverpool and Boston, with Reds owners Fenway Sports Group, an ownership group that has long prided itself on keeping matters in-house, now facing a contract dilemma that has similarities with one they experienced in the United States in 2020, when they lost their star man for the Boston Red Sox, Mookie Betts, to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Like Salah, Betts had been Boston’s talisman and had played a key role in 2018 in the Red Sox winning their fourth World Series title under the ownership of FSG. He was seen as a ‘franchise player’, one who the Red Sox could build a team around for the long-term and that would help them in their annual quest for honours in Major League Baseball.

But money talks, and Boston didn’t put up enough of it and ended up losing their star man, who would win the 2020 World Series with the Dodgers, part-owned by Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly, while the Red Sox missed the post-season altogether.

The Betts situation has never truly gone away in Boston since, with many fans having been unhappy with the way that it panned out, believing it showed a lack of ambition and willingness to invest at the required level to keep the talent offers the best chance of achieving success.

It was a situation that placed FSG in the firing line of Red Sox fans, angry that their owners had traded away their best player for financial reasons, leaving them undeniably weaker as a team in the short term. FSG's argument was that with the Red Sox needing to get themselves under the luxury tax threshold that exists in baseball, where clubs incur heavy financial penalties for being in breach of a pre-determined salary cap, there was a need to get something in return for Betts to allow them to try and rebuild for a tilt at success in the coming seasons.

The long-held belief was that Betts wanted to leave and test free agency and had been unwilling to negotiate new terms with the Red Sox, no matter the figure on the contract. The Red Sox had made numerous offers to Betts, all of them receiving a rejection before he eventually departed for the Dodgers a year before the end of his deal, with FSG unwilling to see their star man leave for nothing in return. FSG offered him a $200m extension in 2017, a figure that rose to $300m before he left.

But in a revealing interview with Boston radio station WEEI, Betts said: " There was an offer that was put out there and we just declined and we felt, I just wanted to get my value, man, That’s all. Just like any person that lives, they want to get their value, what they’re worth. That’s pretty much all that that it was. Just the numbers didn’t align, which is normal. It’s all normal things.

"We just had to go our separate ways. Just like anything else, there was a lot of talk where I didn’t want to stay, or this, that, and the other, that’s false. It’s just business. It is what it is.

"I was able to kind of get over saying no the first time, seeing these big numbers on the paper. Once I was able to say no the first time, it got a little easier and a little easier."

The Salah situation does have its differences. Liverpool won’t want to lose him for nothing, especially having rejected interest from Saudi Arabia for big money last summer. It makes no financial sense to have been willing to reject £100m-plus 16 months or so ago to having a willingness to allow him to walk away for free. But with the sands of time passing it means the situation is now one of real pressure for FSG and Liverpool’s sporting director, Richard Hughes. Despite the fine start to the season under Arne Slot, the looming possibility of losing three of the club’s most important and influential players this summer is hard to ignore.

Salah doesn’t tend to speak without being clear in what he is saying. He has spoken of his love for the club and desire to engage, and his disappointment in the lack of an offer. The ball is now in the court of the club and owners FSG, and if they mis-handle the situation they won’t just be left with egg on their face, but could find that some of the credit that still exists from fans for the good that they have done is eroded away.

Public declarations are a bargaining tool. It was ever thus. The stakes are high now, and Salah will want the value that he believes he commands as one of the best players in the world, a bracket he still belongs in despite his advancing years. Reminding ownership of that fact on the back of a match-winning brace to strengthen the club’s dominance atop of the Premier League likely wasn’t coincidental.

Liverpool’s owners will want to keep Salah. He remains their most popular and impactful player, one whose presence allows them greater exposure in certain markets. He is truly world-class, and a marketable asset still. But he is also very expensive, and from a business case they will be looking at how much they pay him for the job he will do, not the one he has done. The question will likely be around length, and if he is to command the biggest of sums still, how does that look from a risk point of view? Is it better to offer major incentivised bonuses tied to game time and output? But from Salah’s point of view he has delivered over and above what they could have ever imagined from him, surely it is time to pay him whatever he wants?

That, allied with the fact that there are two other major contract talks ongoing, with each player wanting to be paid their worth, not to mention the impact it has on what future contract negotiations may hold when players see that huge sums are on offer with the right leverage, makes it a very dicey time for FSG’s stewardship.

Speaking to The Athletic in 2022, Red Sox president and FSG CEO Sam Kennedy said: "I knew when we were unable to come to an agreement with Mookie and we made the decision in the best interest of the franchise that we needed to move on, I knew at that moment it was going to be incredibly painful for our fans.

“I didn’t know exactly how that would play out. I know I didn’t handle it great in the wake of the Mookie trade in terms of public comments, or trying to defend it, or speak about it. It was a hard time because the truth is we always wanted Mookie to be here forever, but it wasn’t going to happen.

“Having experienced and lived through some challenges in the organisation put us in a better place, put me as a senior leader in a better place, to deal with it. At the end of the day we managed through it and I think it’s a testament to one thing and that’s having consistent ownership. What you really want is consistency in ownership that knows how to deal with difficult times and difficult decisions.”

FSG now have a difficult decision to make, but there is only one decision that will be able to appease fans, and the ire they faced when they let Betts go in Boston could be amplified considerably if they allow Salah to depart Anfield.