Arsenal: Liverpool showing old era how it’s done

Just a year after signing him, Liverpool have already handed Mohamed Salah a new, long-term contract. They are showing the old Arsenal how it’s done.

Paul Merson is largely a muppet. His opinions are often unresearched, he struggles to pronounce even relatively simple names, and he frequently gets things wildly wrong. However, there was one thing the former Arsenal midfielder said that peaked my interest greatly.

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Speaking on the contract mess at his former club, Merson revealed that when he was in north London during the 90s, his contract was never allowed to run down to below two years remaining. Not once, until he aged and slid into a lesser-used reserve role where he was not as integral to the team.

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Contrast that to the contract mismanagement that has been taking place in north London over the past decade. Time and time again, Arsenal’s hand has been forced into selling players — and not just star players — because their contract has been allowed to enter the final year or two. You don’t even need me to list the names. You can all think of them off the top of your head without even trying.

And more than just being forced to sell the more established contributors, short contracts reduce the value of squad players who could be sold for a far greater value. Kieran Gibbs, Wojciech Szczesny and Jack Wilshere are all prime examples in the last year of players leaving for far less than their actual value because they had contracts that were set to expire. It doesn’t make much sense.

What does make a lot of sense, however, is signing your best player and a potential world star to a new long-term deal even though you only signed him a year prior. Predictably, it wasn’t Arsenal that did that. It was Liverpool.

On Monday morning, it was announced that Liverpool had agreed to a new five-year deal with star winger and PFA Player of the Year Mohamed Salah. The Egyptian really did take the world by storm, winning the Golden Boot in the Premier League, leading Liverpool to the Champions League final, coming short in that final because of a dislocated shoulder, and putting his name in a Ballon d’Or race that has almost exclusively belonged to Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

It would have been easy for Liverpool to relax in this situation. They only signed Salah a year ago. He was on a healthy contract already that was set to expire in 2021. But they didn’t. They pressed on, and now they have him locked down until 2023 without a release clause. Clever. Liverpool have also secured the future of Roberto Firmino to a five-year deal.

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It flies in the face of the contractual crisis that Arsenal allowed to fester for a decade. Efficient and effective squad management is what is happening on Merseyside. Let’s hope that the new era in north London can follow suit.