Arne Slot being HUNG OUT TO DRY by FSG | OneFootball

Barely a week goes by without Liverpool coach Arne Slot being asked about the contract situations around three of his star players.

Captain Virgil van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Mohamed Salah are ALL out of contract in 2025, a nightmare scenario for the club.

Losing any of of those would be bad enough but with less than two months before a window opens for interested overseas parties to open talks over free transfers, there remains the distinct possibility that ALL THREE walk out the door for nothing next summer.

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Liverpool sleepwalking towards disaster

While Van Dijk will be 34 by the time his current deal expires, he is STILL one of the best defenders in the world and, perhaps, the very best the Premier League has to offer.

Salah, 32, is hitting God-like numbers yet again and showing no signs of slowing down. In the open market he was valued at around £130 million last year when Al-Ittihad came calling.

Alexander-Arnold is a boyhood Red and under a longer contract, his price could well reach £100m. Liverpool are sleepwalking towards a disaster with the trio being among the best four of five players for the club this season bar none.

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High-stakes poker

The problem?

Renewals don’t come cheap. And in the case of Van Dijk and Salah in particular there is their age situations to factor in. Can Liverpool really afford a significant outlay for the next two to three years on each of them?

Consider that Van Dijk earns more than £200,000 per week and Salah even more on £350,000. That is a hell of a lot of money and it becomes a case of high-stakes poker between the club, the players and their representatives.

For Alexander-Arnold, no matter what Liverpool put in front of him there is the chance that he will move on to Real Madrid in order to satisfy his personal career ambitions.

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An all-time folly

All this means that Liverpool - and Slot - could be lining up next season with NONE of the three in their plans and, even worse, they won’t bank a transfer fee for any one of them in order to help replenish the squad.

That would be a damning stain on the record of sporting director Richard Hughes, who had a difficult window last summer when he also failed to secure the Reds’ No.1 transfer target in Martin Zubimendi.

But you don’t hear much from Hughes. In fact you hear next to nothing.

Answering questions about Liverpool’s impending contract crisis is left to Arne Slot. He is less than six months into his tenure as Liverpool head coach and has to be the public face of, perhaps, the biggest squad-building folly that could EVER be committed as a top-level Premier League club.

Salah questions put to Arne Slot

The issue is that Slot, quite clearly, has no control over what happens next. But that is not going to stop the press asking questions. It was put to the Dutchman on Monday that Salah had appeared to bid farewell to Anfield with a social media post over the weekend.

“You interpreted it in a way that maybe other people don’t,” he said. "I don’t look at Instagram posts of my players, I only talk to them which you can’t, which is the advantage I have. Mo is in a very good place at the moment. As long as he has been at Liverpool, he has been in a very good place, but this season again as well.

“I am hoping he will make a post after tomorrow and on Saturday again. What he said with that, that is not important. For me what is important is how he plays and what he tells me when we have conversations. That is what matters and not how you guys interpret one of his posts.

"I haven’t spoken to him about that. We have spoken about Leverkusen because that team deserves all of our attention for the quality they have.

"He is out of contract at the end of the season - Virgil said something in the press - and now he has a post which you interpreted in a certain way. This will probably continue for as long as their futures are not clear. In the meantime, let’s hope they bring in performances like Mo and Virgil had at the weekend.”

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Liverpool hired a HEAD COACH

“I haven’t spoken to him about that.” And why would he?

Arne Slot is the HEAD COACH not the manager. That was made abundantly clear when he left Feyenoord for Anfield.

He is not an all-encompassing figure like Jurgen Klopp - or Bill Shankly - to go back further. Coach the team, Arne, is the message from upstairs, and we will get on with the contracts and the transfers.

Contrast that with Klopp who often put his paymasters under pressure by calling for new deals for his players in the press.

Just last season Wataru Endo and Joel Matip got that treatment while it could be argued that Jordan Henderson once earned an extension through Klopp’s efforts in the media. Slot doesn’t have that control.

He admits to talking to the aforementioned trio about other things and not their contracts.

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Arne Slot's mixed contract messages

His answers in the press conference don’t matter because he cannot beat Hughes’ door down and demand new deals for his players. He is NOT the manager.

"There are ongoing discussions with the people Virgil says he has to talk to, and that's not me as you know," Slot said last Friday.

"I talk to him about other things. Virgil is completely right that he doesn't know what his future is if he hasn't signed the contract yet.

"The contract situation only becomes a problem if players doesn't perform as well as they are now.

"At the moment, all three are in a good place and performing really, really well."

That is a POOR message for the head coach to send and perhaps betrays his inexperience in these situations.

Is he threatening three of Liverpool’s greatest-ever modern-day players that if their performance levels drop then contract talks will be halted? Who gave him the authority to do so?

Why is Arne Slot being forced to take these questions on a twice-weekly basis while the people who make the decisions take over elsewhere?

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Arne Slot being hung out to dry by FSG

Even if the contracts were to be signed there is every chance Slot wouldn’t find out until it was a done deal.

In the meantime, he is being HUNG OUT TO DRY by Richard Hughes and the FSG hierarchy, awkwardly giving answers to questions about issues he has NO input on and NO control over.

It’s time for some straight-talking at Liverpool in order to nip this in the bud. You hired Arne Slot to be your head coach, stop making him the spokesperson for your strategic incompetence.