Liverpool's Salah, Van Dijk, Alexander-Arnold conundrum surrounding their contracts

Liverpool posted their best result of the season so far, defeating Chelsea 2-1 at Anfield, on a weekend when Arsenal lost to Bournemouth and Manchester City barely survived with another close victory (this time against Wolves) without the injured Rodri. With the victory, they regained their top spot in the league and improved their record to 10 out of 11 across all competitions under new manager Arne Slot.

After defeating Chelsea, Slot became the second-fastest manager in the Premier League to reach ten victories, only surpassed by Pep Guardiola. His team has only given up three goals this season, which is five fewer than any other team, even though they did give up a goal against Chelsea.

The short term appears to be far superior to the long term in spite of all of that. Less than a year remains on the contracts of Liverpool's top three players: Trent Alexander-Arnold, Mohamed Salah, and Virgil van Dijk. While it's unlikely, the club have created a situation where there's now a real chance that this team win the Premier League or the Champions League -- and then lose Van Dijk, Salah and Trent Alexander Arnold for nothing.

Even less likely is the scenario in which all three players sign contracts with new teams prior to the end of this season. They will all be able to negotiate with clubs outside of England on January 1.

So how did we get there? And given all the uncertainty surrounding the team that is currently enjoying their best start since their last (and first) Premier League title, what is the most likely outcome?

Why are Liverpool in this situation in the first place?

After Liverpool nearly won every trophy in 2022 but fell short of both the Premier and Champions League, two things changed. Not on the field, but at the boardroom level: 

(1) Michael Edwards stepped down from the director of football role, and

 (2) the club's owners, Fenway Sports Group, floated the possibility of selling the team.

In terms of impactful executives in the modern Premier League, Edwards might be No. 1. He rebuilt the club's academy, hired Jurgen Klopp to replace Brendan Rodgers, and empowered the club's research department to be involved in all player and coaching acquisitions. In other words, he oversaw everything that helped Liverpool reclaim its status as one of the best teams in the world.

During their heyday, Edwards, Klopp, and FSG president Mike Gordon—the ownership's usual point of contact on the ground at Liverpool—made the final decisions about the squad. It also appeared that without Edwards, that process would go on. Julian Ward, the club's technical director, was eventually named as his replacement in the summer of 2022 after it was announced in November 2021 that he would be leaving at the end of the season.

However, Ward abruptly gave notice a few months later, in November 2022, and left the team at the end of the season. The same is true for Ian Graham, who leads the club's innovative research division. During this time, it was reported that FSG was trying to sell the club.

Meanwhile, Luis Díaz from FC Porto, Darwin Núñez from Benfica, and Cody Gakpo from PSV—the players Liverpool had started to acquire—began to change. They were not all bad players, but none of them were the kind of sure-fire stars or low-cost, high-upside acquisitions with outstanding underlying numbers that gave the team's core the money it needed to win every trophy. Both Diaz and Nunez were risky moves, coming over from the Portuguese league -- especially Nunez, whose transfer cost €75 million, and he was coming off an unsustainable hot finishing season. In contrast, Gakpo was signed immediately following a stellar performance with the Netherlands at the 2022 World Cup, which is normally the last place a team would look for value in the transfer market.

The three of them shared striking physical characteristics, which is to be expected when a manager has a significant impact on player acquisition. With FSG focused on a sale rather than continuity of the squad and without Edwards at the club anymore, Klopp seemed to fill the power vacuum. At least, both Ward and Graham left because they felt like their work was no longer having an impact.

Then, last summer, the club hired Jorg Schmadtke -- a friend of Klopp's -- to be its temporary sporting director for a year. And then Klopp himself announced he'd be leaving the club in the middle of last season.

After reading all of that, it will probably not surprise you to hear that the club has only re-signed one non-academy player since November 2022. And that player is reserve left-back Kostas Tsimikas, who is one of the lower first-term earners and a bench player who seems happy to be a backup.

Since Edwards left, there has basically been no one near the top of the club's hierarchy looking at the team's long-term contract situation. FSG were trying to find someone to pay them billions of dollars to acquire the team; Ward quit just a few months into the gig; Schmadtke was only hired on a temporary basis. And Klopp? Well, he had no clue how to manage the payroll of a gigantic soccer club because he's a soccer coach. On top of that, he knew he wasn't long for the club anyway.

Not only was there really no one in place to prioritize or even make these massive, expensive, looming decisions, but also: why would any of these players look at this situation, see all the constant churn among the people who decide their contracts, and think 'Yeah, this seems stable. Lemme lock myself up for another five years instead of hitting the open market?'

Things are much better today. FSG have recommitted to the club after failing to find a majority buyer; Edwards is back in a role above sporting director; Richard Hughes was brought in from Bournemouth to slide into the sporting director position; Ward is back as technical director. And the research department isn't being sidelined anymore.

But all of this was solidified this spring, right as the team's three star players entered the final years of their contracts. For all the uproar over Liverpool's light activity in the summer transfer market, figuring out the futures of Salah, Van Dijk, and Alexander-Arnold should've been -- and still should be -- the new-but-sort-of-same-as-the-old hierarchy's No. 1 priority.

Salah, Van Dijk, and the price of past performance

The Salah and Van Dijk situations are fascinating, both from a theoretical and market perspective.

Salah will be 33 at the start of next season; Van Dijk 34. Broadly, we know that both players should already be well past their peak and could be at risk of a sudden decline in performance. More specifically, though, they are both arguably still the two best players in the world at their respective positions.

When the analyst Bob Hayes ran a study on aging in soccer, he found that players with high levels of both physical and technical skill tended to age the best. And those more reliant on physical skills aged worse than those who provided value with their technical ability. Salah and Van Dijk clearly both fit into that premier category of physical-and-technical stars.

It's just that there's not much evidence of any defenders playing that much in the Premier League from the age of 34 onwards, and there's even less evidence of them playing at a high level.

Let's say that Liverpool give Van Dijk a three-year deal and make him one of the highest-paid defenders in the league. You'd expect to get around 9,000 minutes from that player: three seasons of starter-level minutes. Well, since the Premier League was created in the early 90's, just three players have played at least 9,000 minutes from their age-34 seasons and on: Arsenal/West Ham's Nigel Winterburn, Manchester City's Stuart Pearce, and Chelsea's Thiago Silva.

Silva, of course, is the obvious comparison for Van Dijk. He didn't join Chelsea until he was 35, and then played a key role for the team that won the Champions League in his first season and finished third in the Premier League and reached two cups finals the following year.

Outside of Silva, though, there just aren't any players who contributed at a high level at such an important position at such an advanced age. In terms of defenders aged 34 and older who have contributed for elite Premier League teams over the past 20 years, the next one after Silva is John Terry, who still only played 2,484 league minutes for Chelsea from his age-34 season onwards.

With forwards, the story isn't quite as grim, but it's still not great. Salah has averaged around 30 goals+assists per domestic season since joining Liverpool. We'll assume the contract they pay him would be requisite to his past production, but let's just say that they'd need around 25 per season to get what they want out of the deal. That's 75 goals+assists from three seasons. Only one player, Teddy Sheringham, hit that mark from age-33 on. He got to 85, but he also stopped playing in 2007 at the age of 40. In fact, only three other players even got to 50 goals+assists from age 33 on: Manchester United's Ryan Giggs, Chelsea's Gianfranco Zola, and Leicester's Jamie Vardy.