Roy Keane has claimed that Mo Salah has every right to be ‘selfish’ in contract negotiations with Liverpool as he and the club strive to reach an agreement on a new deal.
With little more than six months remaining on the Egyptian’s current terms, speculation has been rife about his future at Anfield, and the 32-year-old was criticised by Jamie Carragher last month after the winger publicly revealed that he’s yet to be offered a contract extension by FSG.
David Ornstein reported in recent days that our number 11 – along with Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold – has received a proposal from LFC, although none of the three have penned a new deal with the Premier League leaders as of yet.
Speaking on the latest episode of Stick to Football, Keane fought Salah’s corner by insisting that the player is right to prioritise his own needs in contract negotiations, rather than obligingly accepting the first offer made to him.
The Sky Sports pundit said: “It’s not about being right or wrong if a player wants to put something out there. He’s an experienced player and I think players need to be selfish.
“He’s got to look after himself and he’s got to negotiate the best way he can. If that’s sending little messages out there, I wouldn’t lose any sleep about it.
“He’s got to be selfish, he’s got to look after himself, and if the club want to get him signed up then they have to give him whatever he’s after. He’s that good a player that he’ll have plenty of options.”
Keane added: “There’s always these fun and games with contract situations, particularly when they are coming to an end. The key for me, and what I would give Mo Salah credit for – with all these distractions, and they can be high-class problems – is he’s playing well and he’s producing. That’s the key. The rest will take care of itself.”
To be fair to Keane, he’s speaking from a position from which he can empathise with Salah. The ex-Manchester United captain detailed his own contractual back-and-forth at Old Trafford in the late 1990s after a long-term injury, with some fans criticising his self-prioritising stance at the time.
Whilst we can understand that the Liverpool hierarchy don’t want to set a precedent whereby other players can basically demand what they want in contract negotiations and expect it to be granted with no questions asaked, there must be a realisation that the Egyptian merits being treated as an exceptional case.
That doesn’t necessarily mean blindly giving him what he wants, but rather making more concessions than usual in order to ensure that our fifth-highest goalscorer of all time doesn’t just walk away on a free transfer next summer.
As Keane says, Salah is consistently delivering the goods for his team, with his match-winning penalty against Girona on Tuesday taking him to 16 goals for the season already and ensuring a hard-fought victory.
Few players have done more to earn the right to have their contractual wishes adhered to more than Liverpool’s number 11, and hopefully all parties concerned can soon strike an agreement and finally dispel the seemingly incessant speculation over his future.
The post ‘Give Mo Salah credit’ – Roy Keane fights Liverpool icon’s corner over ‘selfish’ contract stance appeared first on The Empire of The Kop.
