Mohamed Salah scored yet again for Liverpool at the weekend, his 11th Premier League goal against Manchester United since the start of 2021 (the Red Devils have scored eight in that time).

It was also his 18th strike of the 2024-25 campaign — his performances this season are more or less doing the talking for him when it comes to a new contract, but he applied further heat with an Instagram post after the match. Salah left himself with plausible deniability. All he did was post a photo from the game, pretty standard practice for the modern professional.

But of all the images he could have picked, this one felt highly significant. Rather than choosing a photo of his goal or celebration, Salah shared a seemingly innocuous moment where he was standing over the ball with Trent Alexander-Arnold and Virgil van Dijk.

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For anyone even the slightest bit tuned into Liverpool news this season, that's a significant trio. Salah, Van Dijk and Alexander-Arnold are all set to be out of contract in the summer, with negotiations yet to bear fruit. To add to the intrigue, Salah supplied no caption. He posted the same photo, again without explanation, on his Instagram story.

Clearly, he believes that it speaks for itself. And while the exact intention of the post is only known to the 32-year-old, the general thrust does seem clear: Liverpool, sort out this situation.

After all, the photo contains the captain, the vice-captain, and the star player. We're talking about one of the biggest fixtures of the season, in a campaign where Liverpool is pushing hard for the title, and the club's three key figures all played the match with a huge cloud of uncertainty hanging over them.

Taking a step back, that is pretty remarkable. There's no hiding from the fact that it is a failure by Fenway Sports Group to have let things get this far.

Between the flirtation with selling the club, the departures of successive sporting directors, and then Jurgen Klopp's decision to step down, Liverpool's owners simply dropped the ball. Salah's own situation was always likely to be complex, given that he rightly commands a wage befitting one of the very best players in the world, but letting all three contracts enter their final six months has massively complicated matters.

Fortunately, what FSG have to do in order to fix things is clear-cut. They need to accept that they have backed themselves into a weak position, suck it up, and agree new contracts with all three players, even if that means defying the "model" and paying over the odds.

Quite apart from anything else, losing any of Salah, Van DIjk and Alexander-Arnold now would communicate a lack of ambition. The fact that Salah chose to post the three of them together suggests that in the players' minds, the situations are connected — what might in other circumstances have looked like an isolated incident based on individual demands has instead become a broad question of whether Liverpool is prepared to invest in order to keep top talent.

In reality, that might not be fair, with all three negotiations presenting legitimate difficulties. But in one sense, that doesn't matter: if the club lands itself with a reputation for letting top players go, it will breed an even more damaging exodus.

Nor are these three deals all about the optics. On the pitch, it's far from clear that Liverpool could convincingly replace any of the players who are currently set to leave.

Salah is making that as clear as day this season. It's not controversial to say that no signing in the world could come close to matching his output.

Van Dijk, likewise, is having another impressive individual campaign. It's harder to quantify for a defender, but he is surely among the best in the world in his position.

As for Alexander-Arnold, he had a shocker against Manchester United, one which many attributed to his head being elsewhere. But in more general terms, he is a unique footballer, and Liverpool would at the very least have to redefine its system if it were to lose such a generational playmaking right-back.

On and off the pitch, then, there are pressing motivations to put an end to all of this uncertainty and agree new deals. It will be expensive, but the benefits for Liverpool may well be invaluable.