I completely understand your take on it. As a bit of counterbalance - Mané is on half of Salah's wages and always has been (not the reason he's looking for a move now) and hasn't, as far as I know, kicked up a fuss about it which sort of negates that as a reason as to why Salah shouldn't earn more than similar level players with similar time at the club ie. Mané.I agree that having Salah is better than not having Salah. I have high hopes.for Nunez, but he's not Salah. No other player in the world is currently Salah... Even despite Salah's bad calendar year so far, he's probably still better than anyone we could currently sign.
That said...I don't think he is worth destroy the culture of the club. You give him massive wages, as Z man said above, it breaks the wage structure. Are we then going to have every good player in the squad play hardball to try and up their wages? Is everyone going to accept more. Based on other top players salaries, maybe Salah is worth 400k, but I don't think we should.
"You gave Salah 400k, I want 300k!". The whole harmony of the club could collapse if people don't get it. Look at how Salah's performance has fallen since he's sulking for more money.
It's like companies that pay data ransom. You pay a ransom and you're announcing to all other ransomware peddlers... "Hey this company will pay you if you hack them". One hit and you become a target for everyone else.
I feel like the club is on the verge of taking the next step needed in order to keep competing with the oil dopers. They are already upping the perceived limit of what they will pay to land the best players ( I think they would have gone really high for Tchouameni) now they need to offer an upped level of wages in order to keep them. I'm not talking 500k and above but a decent rise from the 250k (or whatever it is) current upper limit.
We didn't start our period of near domination until we went all in on Alisson and Virgil. If we'd kept to our previous level of what we were prepared to pay for a player, that would never have happened. I'd hate for the next stumbling block to progression and further success to be us not being prepared to alter the wage structure in a way that keeps everyone happy.
