Manchester City’s new Erling Haaland contract has shown Liverpool exactly how they should’ve approached their own player negotiations before the matter developed into a crisis.
Haaland has signed a bumper new deal with the reigning Premier League champions that will keep him at the Etihad Stadium until the summer of 2034. City are understood to have spent six months working on the nine-and-a-half-year deal, which is worth in excess of £500,000-per-week.
The 25-year-old’s commitment to another decade with City comes as a huge boost to the club given their poor form and uncertainty around their financial charges. Haaland, who joined from Dortmund in the summer of 2022, had been linked with Real Madrid in the past year but the Spanish giants will now have to sign him the hard way if they wish to do so.
And the way in which City tied down one of their best players for the future is an important lesson to rivals and league leaders Liverpool, who still face the daunting possibility of their three most crucial players leaving as free agents this summer.
Haaland’s initial contract was set to expire at the end of the 2026/27 season, with outgoing director of football Txiki Begiristain desperate to tie up the Norwegian’s services before his departure. The former Barcelona man was keen to keep negotiations with Haaland under wraps too, something which Liverpool have not done and paid the price for.
Mohamed Salah signed his latest contract extension with Liverpool in 2022, meaning the club had just under three years to extend his deal further. The Reds may have imagined that their Egyptian talisman’s form would have declined by the time he reached the age of 32, but their lack of decisiveness regarding his future – having not sold him to Al-Hilal in a big-money transfer a year-and-a-half ago – leaves them in their current predicament.
Trent Alexander-Arnold, meanwhile, signed a four-year deal back in 2021. That means the Reds have had even longer to negotiate a deal for their academy graduate before he entered the final year of his contract.
That’s something the likes of Julian Ward, Liverpool’s former technical director and sporting director, should have managed better, before leaving his successor Richard Hughes with a huge task. Entering contract negotiations early on also has the added benefit of preventing the resulting media frenzy.
Approaching the end of the aforementioned duo and Virgil van Dijk’s contracts means there has been increased speculation linking them to other clubs when it could have been prevented.
New head coach Arne Slot has had the unenviable task of taking questions week-in week-out over their futures, when his priority should be winning the league among other silverware. City's proactiveness, meanwhile, allows Pep Guardiola – or his eventual successor – to avoid such uncomfortable questions.
Salah has even come out and addressed his contract situation directly after games, saying in November that he was “disappointed” with the club’s failure to offer him a new deal. Such talk has the effect of unsettling the rest of the squad as they contemplate losing such a key team-mate.
Alexander-Arnold, who like Haaland has often been linked with Real Madrid, has come under a barrage of criticism from the likes of pundit Jamie Carragher and fans for allegedly entertaining the Spanish side’s interest. Los Blancos tabled a £20million bid for the right-back on New Year’s Eve which was rejected.
Alexander-Arnold has clearly been impacted by such speculation, with his dismal performance against Manchester United earlier this month and recent ‘shushing’ celebration appearing to be a reference to the transfer rumours and his form suffering – another distraction when Slot’s men should be fully focused on winning the likes of the Premier League and the Champions League.
Liverpool's trio, as demonstrated by Salah's bold comments this season, now hold the upper hand in negotiations when it comes to demanding mammoth wages. While the Anfield faithful will be praying to the football Gods for all three to remain at the club beyond the summer, there is a valuable lesson to be learned for the club.