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Mohamed Salah has enjoyed another incredible season for Liverpool and at 32 shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon(Image: Shaun Brooks - CameraSport via Getty Images)

Having already fired in 33 goals to finish as Liverpool's top scorer for an eighth successive season, on the surface, there is no secret to how Mohamed Salah has been able to earn the contract extension he craved.

The Egyptian has been integral to the squad that has won the Premier League, with 28 goals across the division leaving him poised to collect what will be his fourth Golden Boot in English football.

Five goals ahead of his closest rivals for the gong in Newcastle United's Alexander Isak, it will take something surprising now for Salah not to end the campaign with the award once more, as the Premier League closes in on its final two game-weeks.

The decision to offer a new contract, on the face of it, seemed something of a no-brainer from a performance standpoint, but the age of a player who turns 33 before the start of next season, and the fact that he was already the highest earner of all time at Liverpool made it more complicated for the key decision makers at Anfield.

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In many ways, then, the subject of Salah's new two-year contract and the speculation and uncertainty that shrouded the issue, prior to last month's public confirmation, is not too dissimilar to three years ago when the Reds' No.11 put pen to paper on the Greek island of Mykonos.

Signed in late June of 2022, Salah ended months of worry for supporters and joined on for the long haul, earning himself a bumper pay rise in the process, which was both reward not just for what has preceded the deal but also a demand for what must follow.

Eighty-seven goals scored between the previous contract and the most recent deal is enough evidence of a player whose levels are not about to dip alarmingly as he continues through his 30s and that was, in essence, how the club reached the decision to renew Salah three years ago.

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"The parameters will have changed but I am going to guess the decision-making process was very similar to the previous renewal," Dr Ian Graham, the club's director of research at the time says.

Because of the position Mo plays and because a winger or wide-forward tends to skew a bit younger, I was convinced the answer was going to be don't renew his contract and spend the money elsewhere.

"The two problems with that were he is a world-class performer, so you cannot replace that level of performance.

So you are going to spend that money elsewhere and you have to accept that next season or the season after, you're going to have someone in that position that is not as good as [Salah] is today.

They will get better in the future."

Speaking on the High Performance podcast, Graham adds: "The piece that was a surprise to me was I looked at Mo's cohort, his peer-group, and I was really surprised to see the top-end forwards, the really top-end forwards who have a history of robustness, playing 3000 minutes a season, the vast majority of them kept going for another two seasons.

"So if you look at Mo's peer-group, the ones I do remember were Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema, Robert Lewandowski, [all] kept going for years.

So Jurgen, I can't remember what his view was at the time, but I think it's safe to say he was in the pro-extension camp."

Salah's goal-laden performances since that 2022 contract have clearly been enough to allay fears from even the most conservative and risk-averse of decision makers at Liverpool that the next two years are going to be just as fruitful.


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