Just throwing some thoughts I have following Diaz's deal. No real aim to this post other than just share my thoughts and hear what you guys think. All of this is based on the assumption we are renewing Mo.
I thing Divock will probably not be renewed. Klopp comments a month or so ago were something along the lines of ''I hope he finds a club who gives him the playing time he deserves. Now the question lies with Taki. Are we keeping him or not? If we are to believe the reports that emerged yesterday (might be bs as usual), we are also open to selling him.
If we are to believe the different websites (like spotrac), Origi is on 3.1M/year and Taki is on 3.9M/year. This would be 7 million in yearly wages off the books. Considering Mane is on 5.2M/year this free money could be used to renew him (deal runs out in 2023) and transition him into a less prominent role all while reinvesting part of somewhere else. However, this would be dependent on what the player has in mind and how well Diaz does. I think there is no secret we didn't just spend 65M on Diaz only for him to be Mane's understudy for the next two seasons but you also can never guarantee a signing will be succesful or give you the same goal imput. However, I think the logic behind the deal is that he is here to replace Mane by the time his deal runs out.
Mane is fairly versatile and can play accros the frontline. If he is willing to renew for a year or two at similar yearly wages he is on right now knowing he will most probably not see the same number of minutes he is seeing right now then it would be a massive upgrade of depth. You go from Origi and Taki who are both injured a lot and obviously below the current frontline's quality to Mane who is hardly ever injured, can play a LW, CF or RW and still give you more quality than Taki or Origi would be able to give you. The beauty in all of this is that this would be attainable all while shedding wages off the book. I'm not an economist or anything but I think I can safely say that its quite unusual to see this kind of inversly proportional operation.
However, I'm not sure Mane will want that and like I said above, nothing guarantees Diaz will be a success. In the event Mane wants to go elsewhere then this frees an extra 5.2 in yearly wages. Maybe this is used to for acquiring another forward or maybe its already being used in negociations with Mo in order to offer him an improved deal. And by ''used'' I don't necesarily mean the full amount/sum but if we are to believe reports saying Mo wants to go from 200k/week to 300k/week then the reality is that yes, this delta of 100k/week would amount to +5.2M in yearly wages.
Another thing we have to take into consideration is Bobby's situation. I don't know what would be Klopp's and the club's plan for him. He is on 9.3M/year or 180k/week and his deal also runs out in 2023 (same as Sadio's) . If you look at our wage pyramid, it's pretty clear that he is towards the top of it which indicates that he's seen as an important part of the squad. However, Jota has been playing that positiion with lots of success recently so I'm not sure what to think.
I personally think that if we keep one of Sadio or Firmino then it might be the former just because of his versatility but I am not JK or the club's Julian Ward. Maybe the plan is one gets sold this summer the other leaves on a free or maybe both are off this summer.
Interested in hearing what you guys think. Would you keep one of them, which one and why? Would you keep both? Or try and sell both this summer?
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