Liverpool's 24/25 season could have hardly started better this season (despite that Nottingham Forest loss) with Arne Slot seamlessly adapting to life as head coach after taking over from Jurgen Klopp .
But despite Liverpool sitting atop the Premier League , conceding just two goals in seven games, and being undefeated in the Champions League... fans still have a right to be angered by the club.
While this season will have been enjoyable from a fan perspective, a rain cloud remains above the club. A cloud that is just annoyingly, slowly, dripping water on their heads.
Week by week, annoyance levels incrementally increase, and it becomes somewhat worrying. You can't just forget about it, you know it is going to need to be addressed at some point soon.
That rain cloud is the contracts of Mohamed Salah , Virgil van Dijk , and Trent Alexander-Arnold .
As the season runs on and the weeks tick away, we come closer to the genuine possibility that Liverpool's three best players of the last seven years could leave on a free transfer on the same day.
Quite frankly, the fact that we're even here right now feels ridiculous. How have Liverpool's owners and decision-makers let this get to the point where these players could even be given the possibility to walk at the end of their contract?
Yes, Liverpool has let key players leave on a free transfer in recent years in the Jurgen Klopp era. The likes of Roberto Firmino, James Milner, Naby Keita, and Georginio Wijnaldum all left this way. But these are players who were not going to offer much if they had stuck around on another contract - players that had all past their best and had extremely little value on the open market.
Even if Liverpool's front office feels that Van Dijk and Salah are now past their best and will be a good return on investment if they extend them... why didn't they see this coming a year ago? They knew their contracts would run out, it feels strange that they would not give both players a short-term extension and then potentially look to get maximum value in the transfer market when they deemed it optimal to do so.
The situation is even more baffling when it comes to their vice-captain. Rumors surrounding Alexander-Arnold's potential exit are not new, with Real Madrid links existing throughout the past three years. The idea of him leaving without a significant transfer fee, quite frankly, should get someone fired.
Each week that goes by without them being extended, the more Liverpool fans should question what on earth the front office as doing.
All three of these players should have been extended before Slot walked through the door.
Obviously, they still have time to make all of this right. While letting even just one of the three leave the club on a free transfer would be a monumentally awful decision - and would see them miss out on hundreds of millions from transfer fees - they still have time to sign all three to extensions and secure their future.
But if they are to let any of them leave, they leave Slot with a huge hole in his team, which he'll have to replace and do so without any incoming funds in the way of a transfer fee.
Local News
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