Liverpool cannot rely on Salah, Mane and Firmino forever. Which one can they sell to make way for new talent?
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Outside of the reserve goalkeeper, a 17-year-old central defender with red hair and a 16-year-old winger, Liverpool have not added a new player this summer. Before buying free agent goalkeeper Adrian on August 5, the club had not yet made any senior players. (And since Alisson went down in the first half of the season opener against Norwich, Adrian is now a goalkeeper until further notice.)
While the teams that chased them at the top end of the Premier League all improved in the last week of the summer transfer window, the Reds decided to stay on, not adding anyone who might contribute in the first team's significant minutes this season.
Last year was almost as good as it got. Liverpool won the Champions League and won the third highest total point in the history of the Premier League. They did it with a team of players who all peaked together or whose best years were years away. Among the 15 players who played at least 1,000 minutes of the Premier League last season, 14 of them were 28 years old or younger at the start of the campaign. The only player on the wrong side of the 30 is James Milner, whose career in the Premier League is likely to last forever
In addition, there are many types of "like new signing" types that are expected to contribute more than they did in 2018-19. Naby Keita only made 16 starts in the league, and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain missed all but 16 minutes available after tearing up his ACL in the 2017-18 Champions League quarter-final against Manchester City.
If you want to focus on the weaknesses of the first XI last year, it will be the lack of attacking output provided by midfield. Keita and Ox are dynamic young pedestrians and dribblers with a track record of scoring goals and creating goals from the inside. There must be a case to be made that they will provide some internal improvement or at least help prevent some inevitable regressions for a team that experiences significant good fortune at both ends of the pitch (89 goals at 90.92 expected, 22 goals conceded at 34 , 64 expected).
Liverpool was one of the three best teams in the world last season. Milner remains the only significant contributor to the north of 29; except for an injury crisis or a long season of rotten luck or impossible, Liverpool must be one of the best teams in the world once again. But Jurgen Klopp & Co. can't keep doing this forever. The squad that tops together decreases together too.
They are good at leveraging the market for Philippe Coutinho and reinvesting his money in this new team, but will they really understand again when the Spanish super clubs knock on one of their all-star forwards?
In short, should Liverpool consider the unthinkable and divide their three great fronts?
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The set piece is very good, and the same thing applies to Virgil van Dijk (who is "Mr. Indispensable" for the Reds), Alisson and world-class wing-back cut-cut, but Liverpool have risen this high thanks to their three forwards.
Since Mohamed Salah arrived from Rome in the summer of 2018 to complete a trio with Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino, Liverpool have the second most points in the Premier League behind Manchester City which is very deep. From 2010 to 2017, the club never made it past the Champions League group stages. With the three attackers, the club has reached the last two finals and won one of them.
Farther than that. Since the start of the 2017-18 season, Salah, Mane and Firmino have joined for 158 goals in the Champions League and Premier League. That's almost two-thirds of the team's 244 goals during that span. Out of the three, no other player who still with the club has more than seven goals.
Their value is evident both inside and outside Anfield. According to the CIES football observatory transfer assessment, the three Liverpool forwards are worth a total of € 521.6 million. Salah (€ 219.6 million) is listed as the second most valuable player in the world behind Kylian Mbappe, while Mane (€ 157.8 million) is sixth and Firmino (€ 144.2 million) eighth. Not surprisingly, no other club has three players in the top 10.
However, those values will not be that high for longer. One turned 27 in June; Mane celebrates the same birthday in April; and Firmino aged 28 in October. Most attackers start to decline right around this time. Take a star player, throw a small drop-off in production and you still have a star player, only slightly reduced. But when it happens to three men at once, the effect on team performance can be exponential.
So Liverpool have a problem to solve. That is a problem they are fortunate to have, but it is still a problem.
They can keep all three of them and get the maximum amount of production on the field from them over the next few seasons, but in the end will leave them with an expensive and declining trio of old players whose transfer value will be greatly decreased. (All three have contracts that expire on the same day: mark your calendar for 30 June 2023). Or they can try to sell high at one just before the decline comes, run the risk of losing another big season or two, but then use the money to find a replacement, reinvest elsewhere in the army, or both.
Among the three fronts, Salah is the untouchable. Over the past two seasons, he has led the team in - deep shots, goals, assists, expected goals, expected assists, take-ons, chances made, great opportunities created, touches in the opponent's box, sequence ending with shots and ending order with a goal. Choose attacking statistics related to putting the ball in the goal and Salah is likely the leader of Liverpool.
As for Mane and Firmino, it might only go down to age vs. current value. Although it functions as the de facto team No. 9, Firmino gives an aggressive defensive presence and leads the team through the ball which was completed over the last two seasons. He was only two goals behind Mane during that stretch, while also offering 22 assists for Mane 11. But Firmino is seven months older and Mane is bound for the Premier League in goals this year, so the latter will likely demand higher fees.
It seems absurd to consider breaking one of the best trio of strikers we've seen this century, but to stay competitive, the majority of clubs must constantly try to balance the present with the future. Time always wins. Each player eventually gets older and eventually gets worse, so managing the squad is a constant juggling between making short-term sacrifices for long-term profits and vice versa, while recognizing that all the points of this company are to win as many points as you can, year after year.
Only a handful of clubs are able to maximize the present and future at the same time. Liverpool are not one of these teams - at least not yet.
According to the latest Deloitte Soccer Money League ranking, for the 2017-18 season, Liverpool recorded the seventh highest income (€ 513.7 million) in world soccer. That number, and potentially that ranking, will be even higher in the future. According to Swiss Ramble, an anonymous expert in football finance, Liverpool's European Cup victory pushed their total revenue from broadcasting (Premier and Champions leagues, combined) to € 251 million - the most money any club has ever received from television.
The club has a lot of money to spend, and a source who works with European clubs told ESPN that he expects Liverpool's revenues, behind two in-depth Champions League rounds plus world leading Premier League TV deals, to immediately catch up with like Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, two clubs that can build for the future without having to sell any prizes. However, Liverpool owner John Henry told The New York Times Magazine in May that the purchase of Alisson, Van Dijk and Fabinho would not have been possible if the club had not sold Coutinho to Barcelona.
Whatever their financial future, it seems that not much will change at Liverpool this season or maybe even next season. But at some point soon, the club will enter a new era - for one reason or another.
While the teams that chased them at the top end of the Premier League all improved in the last week of the summer transfer window, the Reds decided to stay on, not adding anyone who might contribute in the first team's significant minutes this season.
Last year was almost as good as it got. Liverpool won the Champions League and won the third highest total point in the history of the Premier League. They did it with a team of players who all peaked together or whose best years were years away. Among the 15 players who played at least 1,000 minutes of the Premier League last season, 14 of them were 28 years old or younger at the start of the campaign. The only player on the wrong side of the 30 is James Milner, whose career in the Premier League is likely to last forever
In addition, there are many types of "like new signing" types that are expected to contribute more than they did in 2018-19. Naby Keita only made 16 starts in the league, and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain missed all but 16 minutes available after tearing up his ACL in the 2017-18 Champions League quarter-final against Manchester City.
If you want to focus on the weaknesses of the first XI last year, it will be the lack of attacking output provided by midfield. Keita and Ox are dynamic young pedestrians and dribblers with a track record of scoring goals and creating goals from the inside. There must be a case to be made that they will provide some internal improvement or at least help prevent some inevitable regressions for a team that experiences significant good fortune at both ends of the pitch (89 goals at 90.92 expected, 22 goals conceded at 34 , 64 expected).
Liverpool was one of the three best teams in the world last season. Milner remains the only significant contributor to the north of 29; except for an injury crisis or a long season of rotten luck or impossible, Liverpool must be one of the best teams in the world once again. But Jurgen Klopp & Co. can't keep doing this forever. The squad that tops together decreases together too.
They are good at leveraging the market for Philippe Coutinho and reinvesting his money in this new team, but will they really understand again when the Spanish super clubs knock on one of their all-star forwards?
In short, should Liverpool consider the unthinkable and divide their three great fronts?
The set piece is very good, and the same thing applies to Virgil van Dijk (who is "Mr. Indispensable" for the Reds), Alisson and world-class wing-back cut-cut, but Liverpool have risen this high thanks to their three forwards.
Since Mohamed Salah arrived from Rome in the summer of 2018 to complete a trio with Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino, Liverpool have the second most points in the Premier League behind Manchester City which is very deep. From 2010 to 2017, the club never made it past the Champions League group stages. With the three attackers, the club has reached the last two finals and won one of them.
Farther than that. Since the start of the 2017-18 season, Salah, Mane and Firmino have joined for 158 goals in the Champions League and Premier League. That's almost two-thirds of the team's 244 goals during that span. Out of the three, no other player who still with the club has more than seven goals.
Their value is evident both inside and outside Anfield. According to the CIES football observatory transfer assessment, the three Liverpool forwards are worth a total of € 521.6 million. Salah (€ 219.6 million) is listed as the second most valuable player in the world behind Kylian Mbappe, while Mane (€ 157.8 million) is sixth and Firmino (€ 144.2 million) eighth. Not surprisingly, no other club has three players in the top 10.
However, those values will not be that high for longer. One turned 27 in June; Mane celebrates the same birthday in April; and Firmino aged 28 in October. Most attackers start to decline right around this time. Take a star player, throw a small drop-off in production and you still have a star player, only slightly reduced. But when it happens to three men at once, the effect on team performance can be exponential.
So Liverpool have a problem to solve. That is a problem they are fortunate to have, but it is still a problem.
They can keep all three of them and get the maximum amount of production on the field from them over the next few seasons, but in the end will leave them with an expensive and declining trio of old players whose transfer value will be greatly decreased. (All three have contracts that expire on the same day: mark your calendar for 30 June 2023). Or they can try to sell high at one just before the decline comes, run the risk of losing another big season or two, but then use the money to find a replacement, reinvest elsewhere in the army, or both.
Among the three fronts, Salah is the untouchable. Over the past two seasons, he has led the team in - deep shots, goals, assists, expected goals, expected assists, take-ons, chances made, great opportunities created, touches in the opponent's box, sequence ending with shots and ending order with a goal. Choose attacking statistics related to putting the ball in the goal and Salah is likely the leader of Liverpool.
As for Mane and Firmino, it might only go down to age vs. current value. Although it functions as the de facto team No. 9, Firmino gives an aggressive defensive presence and leads the team through the ball which was completed over the last two seasons. He was only two goals behind Mane during that stretch, while also offering 22 assists for Mane 11. But Firmino is seven months older and Mane is bound for the Premier League in goals this year, so the latter will likely demand higher fees.
It seems absurd to consider breaking one of the best trio of strikers we've seen this century, but to stay competitive, the majority of clubs must constantly try to balance the present with the future. Time always wins. Each player eventually gets older and eventually gets worse, so managing the squad is a constant juggling between making short-term sacrifices for long-term profits and vice versa, while recognizing that all the points of this company are to win as many points as you can, year after year.
Only a handful of clubs are able to maximize the present and future at the same time. Liverpool are not one of these teams - at least not yet.
According to the latest Deloitte Soccer Money League ranking, for the 2017-18 season, Liverpool recorded the seventh highest income (€ 513.7 million) in world soccer. That number, and potentially that ranking, will be even higher in the future. According to Swiss Ramble, an anonymous expert in football finance, Liverpool's European Cup victory pushed their total revenue from broadcasting (Premier and Champions leagues, combined) to € 251 million - the most money any club has ever received from television.
The club has a lot of money to spend, and a source who works with European clubs told ESPN that he expects Liverpool's revenues, behind two in-depth Champions League rounds plus world leading Premier League TV deals, to immediately catch up with like Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, two clubs that can build for the future without having to sell any prizes. However, Liverpool owner John Henry told The New York Times Magazine in May that the purchase of Alisson, Van Dijk and Fabinho would not have been possible if the club had not sold Coutinho to Barcelona.
Whatever their financial future, it seems that not much will change at Liverpool this season or maybe even next season. But at some point soon, the club will enter a new era - for one reason or another.
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