We'll see.
Massive summer for LFC due to the number of players with 2 years left on their contracts: Virg, Henderson, Salah, Bobby, Sadio, Fab I think, Keita defo, also Ox I think and Shaq. That's nearly a whole team worth of players and heavily weighted toward midfield and "the front three".
Michael Edwards is going to have to get LFC's chequebook out a lot this summer (and his 'For Sale' signs) and if his offers aren't what the players and their agents are happy with, things could get very messy. You have to suspect we've been playing hardball/lowball with Gini. We will have had almost 18 months of pulverised income by then so the negotiating by the club may be even tougher than Gini's had to deal with.
If Mo doesn't like the contract he's surely going to get offered, then his agent is going to quickly become Liverpool fans' public enemy number one.
But Mo's numbers are getting steadily worse. Take his pens out (as you should to get the real picture) and he's scoring half what he did a few years back. And as was pointed out above, defensively it's like playing with 9 outfield players. Sure he gambols around like a spring lamb in the vicinity of opposition left backs, but he never actually tries to tackle them. If I can spot this then so can opposition coaches. Luke Shaw spent the first half hour of our last game with United leaving Salah in his wake, and joining up with Rashford or Martial or whoever it was, creating 2-on-1s which skewered Trent trying to defend them on his own. That means you've got to sacrifice your right-sided 8 completely, all because Mo doesn't want to get stuck in. And that for me was why JK left Mo out of the recent Leeds game and I wouldn't be massively surprised if the same happened this weekend. Cue loads of Reds

That Ramos incident had a massive impact and hasn't gone away. Throughout Mo's mega-season he would look to receive the ball into feet and it would stick like glue, Messi-level glue, and Mo would spin away and bye bye. He's not been the same player since. It's like he's thinking about the fullback coming in behind him instead of concentrating on the ball. That Messi-like first touch is rarely seen these days. Shame he missed that sitter early on v Real the other night as I thought he was lively and probably deserved a goal for his improved workrate. I think Klopp told him why he was benched v Leeds and Mo's taken it on board - hopefully.
Can we replace a player who is now down to scoring about 15 goals a season from 30 a few years ago? Yes, I'm confident we can, though if we want another left-footer for that slot (which we should) it makes the job of finding a replacement 10* harder. There's no way on this fine Earth we should be giving Mo a pay rise though when his numbers are steadily going the wrong direction and for most of his next contract he'll be the wrong side of 30. Michael Edwards may see it that way. He may not. We'll see...
Logged