‘Unbelievable’ Mohamed Salah Drops Shocking January transfer Statement To Liverpool and FSG

There would, of course, have been a point at which Liverpool simply had to say yes from a business perspective, but such a decision never had to be made after the initial £150m bid, which was believed to have been made up of a £100m guaranteed sum and the rest based on a number of contingents, rejected by FSG president Mike Gordon via phone call.

Making that decision could have been easier than it may have appeared.

Speaking to the ECHO’s Bottom Line Podcast, renowned sports lawyer and author Daniel Geey, who has worked on many big transfers and takeover deals during his career, said: “It could be £100m guaranteed but it could be a £15m down payment and £85m over time.

I would have thought that if, for example, it was a £200m bid and all £200m was going to be payable within 30 days of the transfer then it would have been a very different conversation.

“I query whether Liverpool’s position might change next summer when Salah is a year out of contract and perhaps isn’t as valuable, but Liverpool need him firing on all cylinders to get them, as a minimum, back in the Champions League.

“In the next Champions League cycle it is going to be more lucrative, there is going to be more games, there is going to be more variety of games through the new Swiss Model.”

Between Chelsea’s huge transfer spend and the desire of the Saudi Pro League to invest in top talent to bring eyeballs to their domestic competition, it was a summer transfer window like no other.

Saudi Arabia’s four biggest clubs, Al-Hilal, Al-Nassr, Al-Ahli and Al-Ittihad, were all acquired by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF), the owners of Newcastle United, earlier this year, with heavy investment the plan to achieve the goal of creating a league to challenge Europe’s biggest six competitions, with the Saudi government wanting to diversify their revenue streams away from traditional oil and gas and improve the image of the nation on the world stage through sport.

The argument has been made that it has been a destabilising window that has driven up transfer prices, although Geey believes that the arrival of Saudi has allowed clubs to reinvest in new talent by selling peak, or just past peak players for strong fees.

“Some think that Saudi destabilised the market but I do wonder in a way that the law of the Saudi Pro League really helped rebalance the market for some clubs,” said Geey.

“For everyone that says it is destabilising others will say the exact opposite.

There are obviously a lot of players at a lot of clubs that maybe might have been at their peak or past their peak and maybe might not have been as value for money as they were.

“I still think that if clubs really didn’t want to let those players go then they wouldn’t have gone. That’s what happened with Salah.

At this time, in this particular place, Salah was seen as indispensable to Liverpool and that’s why he didn’t leave.

“There were players across the globe who were more dispensable, in truth.

That has helped in terms of transfer fees recouped for particular players, wages saved for particular players, and that enables clubs to be able to go and reinvest in effectively younger models.

“What we saw in the Saudi instance were a lot of those teams buying established, mature players that can add instant recognition for the league.

That obviously comes around in terms of potential broadcasting revenues and commercial deals and everything else that comes with it.

What doesn’t seem to have happened in this window is Saudi going after genuinely up and coming world class players, and that is still the staple type of transfer fee that Premier League clubs have gone after.

Before the plan for the Saudi Pro League there have been other attempts to spend big sums to sign elite players in other leagues, such as China and India.

Neither plan has worked out, with the economic struggles faced by China seeing them row back almost completely on their plan to make the Chinese Super League a power on the global stage.

Saudi Arabia has huge, government backed wealth, for the plan to grow the Saudi Pro League, but Geey states that any argue around sustainability is likely flawed given that football has not been sustainable for a long time now.

“Nothing in football has been sustainable over a significant portion of time, in truth,” said Geey.

“Go back years before FFP (Financial Fair Play), even after FFP, and football clubs have been very, very good at losing large amounts of money on an annual basis.

There was only really a small period of time where FFP regulations prohibited spending on wages more than in previous years, and they were done away with too.

“I’d just provide the context that you go back into certain eras, even inside the Premier League, (Roman) Abramovich comes in and blows everyone else out the water through their transfer policy at that particular time.

There was nothing sustainable about that. The only sustainable feature was that you had a very rich individual willing to bankroll a team for on-field success, which they absolutely achieved.

“Ultimately, and it sounds trite to say, is not like any other business. You are judged not by your bottom line but by your bottom line in terms of glory; titles, qualification, promotion, relegation, trophies.

In terms of sustainability it is the measure that is different now. It is a much wider play if you look the investments in LIV Golf, in tennis, in Padel and in terms of football. Anyone thinking this is as narrow as just a football play is going to be looking silly in the years to come.

This is a divestment play by one of the biggest sovereign wealth funds in the world to invest sensibly across a huge number of diverse revenue streams that they will hope in the medium term to long term will produce returns”