IAN HERBERT: The signs that Mohamed Salah will STAY at Liverpool… and why the club MUST make it happen

It was the casual way Arne Slot threw out Mohamed Salah’s name in the Anfield press conference room early on Sunday evening which screamed his significance.

‘It is so difficult to win a game of football,’ Slot said. ‘People always feel like, “Ah, you’ve got Mo Salah, what are you talking about? He will always score a goal”. No — it is difficult.’

Salah does almost always score or assist a goal, actually. He has failed to produce one in just four of Liverpool’s 25 Premier League games this season, scored 38.3 per cent of the team’s goals and had more goal involvements than nine entire teams in the division have managed.

Liverpool’s Salah dependency has been incontrovertible in the past few weeks. He’s not really been ripping games up, but then, with optimal efficiency, he’s struck.

There was the goal and nonchalant clipped cross for Alexis Mac Allister’s bullet header at Goodison Park. The penalty against Wolves. Even his absence at Plymouth. ‘I think Liverpool must realise how important it is to keep him,’ Graeme Souness said of the FA Cup defeat.

Slot’s language about Salah seems so much warmer than Jurgen Klopp’s. ‘He is so experienced and smart and knows so well where the ball will fall,’ Slot said last Friday. ‘That’s a positive thing about being 32 — he has lived through so many situations.’ The feeling seems to be mutual. ‘Excellent at his job,’ Salah’s agent tweeted of Slot on Friday. Not the kind of public love he expressed for Klopp.

He appears to have a warmer relationship with Arne Slot than he did with Jurgen Klopp

Liverpool should break their rules for a 32-year-old whose physicality is not deteriorating

Relations with those higher up the Liverpool food chain don’t seem quite as warm. Salah feels slightly less loved up there.

Liverpool are in a bind about how much to invest to commit to the extension of his contract.

He will turn 33 in June and to keep him beyond that age goes against the grain of the data-driven ethos on which Liverpool’s return to the top of the British game has been based.

Central to that ethos is the fact there are no guarantees what a player of that age will offer you. A physical dip and depreciation of the asset will inevitably come. Liverpool don’t generally sign up to decisions like this.

But Salah, built like a torpedo and delivering better stats than two years ago, also runs against the usual physical norms.

A Liverpool squad without him would be a shadow of the current one. The replacements Liverpool have looked at include Brentford’s Bryan Mbeumo, Bournemouth’s Antoine Semenyo, Borussia Dortmund’s Jamie Gittens and Real Sociedad’s Takefusa Kubo. But would any of those deliver Salah’s goals?

There would be greater certainty about Newcastle’s Alexander Isak. But the outlay could be £120million and perhaps £350,000 a week in wages. Salah is the man already in the building, with all the certainties that brings. It looks a very easy equation and Liverpool’s position is that they do want to retain him. It’s the numbers — wage and length of deal — that are uncertain.

Would he stay for a lower basic salary and more based on performance over the next two years?

Liverpool lean on him more than they have on other icons due to a lack of goals from elsewhere

Cody Gakpo has improved markedly under Slot but the other forwards are nowhere near

Their loss to Plymouth in his absence was a bitter taste of what life could be like after Salah

Salah’s agent did not express so much love for Klopp, but has described Slot as ‘excellent’

The Egyptian is even more integral to the club than Kevin Keegan (above) was, because Kenny Dalglish was an obvious replacement for him – with Salah, Liverpool have no such luxury

Top replacements for Salah are scarce, and is it really worth risking £120m on Alexander Isak?

Announcing renewals for Salah and Virgil van Dijk would be a huge boost for their title bid

Salah’s negotiating position is strengthened by the fact that the other strikers Slot rotates bring nowhere near the same goal threat. Diogo Jota, starting his first league game in four months on Sunday, has struggled with fitness and puts himself in nowhere near the same number of scoring situations. His expected goals (xG) figure for this season and last is 16.8. Salah’s is 52.7. Jota couldn’t seize the scraps against Wolves.

Cody Gakpo has been the emerging force this season — used to far greater effect by Slot than Klopp. But Luis Diaz’s goal on Sunday was his first this calendar year, and Darwin Nunez, popular because of his work ethic, lacks consistency. While Salah has scored 53 times from an xG of 52.7, Nunez has scored 24 goals from an xG of 33.6, so is underperforming by almost 10 goals.

In the great Liverpool era of the 1970s and 80s, there was an obvious solution at a moment like this. When Kevin Keegan, entranced by European football, told Bob Paisley he wanted to leave, Kenny Dalglish was the ideal replacement. Salah is even more integral to Liverpool than Keegan was back then, but there’s no obvious Dalglish figure this time.

An extra two years for Salah would allow Liverpool time to bring through a replacement and effect some kind of succession, challenging though that kind of process is in the modern age. Under Paisley, big-name signings like Ray Kennedy and Terry McDermott were signed and then initiated into the Liverpool way while biding their time on the sidelines.

There have been hints of a breakthrough with Salah. A senior adviser to the Saudi Pro League was quoted last week as saying the Saudis felt they were ‘being used’ in negotiations for a contract which would see Al Hilal offer the player a reported £65m for two seasons. The adviser said: ‘We are getting less indication from the player that he is even considering moving here.’

A joint announcement declaring that Salah and Virgil van Dijk are to remain would be a huge boost amid Liverpool’s attempt to push on for the title.

In the meantime, the club will take customary confidence from having Salah in the side at Aston Villa on Wednesday night.