Why Get Rid?
AN ARTICLE BY MATTHEW
<I want to break down the idea that Liverpool “have to” sell one of Mane, Firmino and Salah this summer. I want to break down each of the reasons people have offered as to why it must happen and then offer either my support or rebuttal. The first reason I’ve seen is that we need the money from their sale in order to fund more transfers. My response to this is “Have you seen our transfer spending recently?” Sure, it’s not quite what City have spent, but spending £160 million in the last two years isn’t nothing. And what significant player have we had to sell to fund all this? Harry Wilson? Xherdan Shaqiri? You could say Wijnaldum but he left for free. So no, I don’t think we need major player sales to fund the moves we typically make. We just dumped £45 million on Diaz without selling anyone in January. Keep doing what we’re doing, sell the fringe players when their usefulness is up, and we’ll be fine. Plus we should have much more revenues coming in this season than in the Covid-impacted years.
Onto the next point (this could be a full article): they’re getting old. The age of 30 is treated like a death knell in modern football. And yet Thiago Silva is still one of the world’s best defenders at 39. You can’t possibly pay big money to players once they hit 30. And yet Robert Lewandowski broke the record last season for most Bundesliga goals in a season. My point? If they’re not declining by age 30, it’s okay to pay them. Mane, Firmino and Salah are all still really, really good. And we’ve seen Mane and Salah adapt their play style with age (look at Mane in the false nine role) while we’ve always assumed Firmino’s style would age well anyways. So age isn’t a detractor for me when they’re still amazing.
Lastly, we get to the reason of “they’ll get in the way of youngsters”. Firstly, most youngsters don’t make the grade. Really, which academy grads from any PL academy have made a significant impact outside of Foden and Trent? Now Liverpool have done extremely well with their academy to backfill the squad with aspiring youth talents such as Jones, Elliott, Kelleher, and more. Elliott in particular could take the jump to superstardom next season. But even with Thiago, Henderson and Milner sticking around into their 30s, they’re not really blocking the development of Jones and Elliott. If anything, they’re enhancing it with their own ability being absorbed by the younger students. This won’t happen with Mane, Firmino and Salah? You’re telling me Kaide Gordon won’t benefit from learning under Salah? So no, I don’t think we “have to” sell any of the original front three. If we can’t agree to a contract and they want to leave, that’s different. But I don’t see a footballing reason to let them go.
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