To have one key player in the final year of his contract is happenstance. To have two key players in the final year of their contracts is coincidence. To have three key players in the final year of their contracts begins to look a little like carelessness. The contracts of Virgil van Dijk, Mohamed Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold will all expire next summer, and that creates uncertainty, not only for those players concerned but for Liverpool as a whole.
Everything connected to the trio is inevitably filtered through that doubt. When Alexander-Arnold looked miffed after being replaced by Conor Bradley with 18 minutes remaining of last Sunday’s win over Brentford, it was impossible not to wonder whether this was more than the usual frustration of the withdrawn player. Was it a rift? Was this Alexander-Arnold demonstrating his distaste for Arne Slot and making clear his heart no longer lies at Anfield?
Slot, it should be said, seemed entirely unconcerned by the incident, the Liverpool manager explaining that he understood that players wanted to play 90 minutes and that Alexander-Arnold had been taken off in both games so far purely to ease his return to action after his exertions with England during the Euros. It was probably nothing, but the doubt over his contract means that nothing can ever be entirely nothing.
The Alexander-Arnold situation is perhaps the most troubling for Liverpool. He will turn 26 in October and has been at the club for almost two decades. He is an exceptional talent, his capacity to play in a hybrid right-back/central midfield role giving Liverpool a gifted passer of the ball who can hurt opponents from unusual areas. The way Slot has used him so far, notably in the second half at Ipswich, suggests he is keen to make the most of that aspect of Alexander-Arnold’s game.
Local and popular, he is widely used in Liverpool’s promotional material. He wears Adidas boots, which will become of greater significance when Liverpool switch from Nike to Adidas kit next summer. With two to three years on his contract, he would probably fetch an eight-figure sum. To lose him for nothing would not only be a blow to the football and commercial side of the business, but represent a financial blow for a club already struggling to keep up with Manchester City and Arsenal.
Alexander-Arnold himself has been reluctant to discuss the contract in public, but it is no great secret that he is a good friend of Jude Bellingham and that Real Madrid have long identified him as a possible successor to Dani Carvajal.
It’s slightly mystifying, then, that as Alexander-Arnold reaches what should be his peak years, Liverpool have allowed his contract to run down, a situation that has developed because of the changes behind the scenes at the club.
Julian Ward left his job as sporting director in 2023 and was replaced on an interim basis by Jörg Schmadtke before the arrival of Richard Hughes this summer. Schmadtke’s focus was on rejigging the midfield, particularly after the unexpected departures of Fabinho and Jordan Henderson. Once Jürgen Klopp had announced in January that he would leave at the end of the season, it is understandable that a sporting director who was going at the end of the year would not wish to saddle Klopp’s replacement with a costly player on a long contract whom he might not even want.
Alexander-Arnold earns about £200,000 a week, but can probably expect a new deal to be worth significantly more. One of Hughes’s priorities after taking the job was to contact Alexander-Arnold’s representatives but, as yet, it’s not even clear whether talks over a contract extension have begun.
It’s safe to say Liverpool are extremely keen to keep hold of Alexander-Arnold; their position on Salah might be slightly more complicated. He will turn 33 a couple of weeks before his contract expires next June and, although he still scored 18 league goals last season, his form after suffering a hamstring injury at the Africa Cup of Nations was disappointing enough to wonder whether he might be in decline – although sharp displays against Ipswich and Brentford went a long way to answering that concern.
Last summer, Liverpool rejected a £150m bid from Al-Ittihad. Salah is the club’s highest-paid player on a basic £350,000 a week: if it comes down to money, there is no way Liverpool could even begin to compete with the sort of signing-on bonus and salary Al-Ittihad or another Saudi Pro League club could offer.
Although there has been some retrenchment in Saudi football recently, Salah’s popularity in the Middle East means he would be regarded as a major star worth splashing out on. Paradoxically, that level of celebrity might make such a move less attractive to Salah, who is understood to relish the relative lack of scrutiny in England.
Van Dijk has described himself as “very calm” about his future. He will be 34 just after his contract expires and, while the Dutchman might not be quite the figure he was at his peak, he is still one of the best central defenders in the world.
Liverpool, like many clubs, are reluctant to offer lengthy deals to players over 30 – even Van Dijk’s deal in 2021 was an outlier in that regard – but exceptions can always be made for the very best. It’s understandable if Van Dijk – and others – want to take a few weeks to assess Slot, but the likeliest outcome for him would appear at this stage to be an extension of a year or two.
Individually, none of the three cases is particularly remarkable or troubling. But en masse, to have three such celebrated players potentially leaving the club next summer is destabilising. The sales of a number of young players and the paucity of signings have contributed to an uneasy atmosphere, worries over the extent to which Fenway Sports Group is willing or able to continue funding the club.
Almost certainly it’s a short-term problem caused by the shuffle of backroom staff and a reluctance to commit large sums until a degree of stability is achieved. But the sooner some resolution is found, the sooner the background anxiety will fade away.
