Mohamed Salah's Liverpool contract standoff no closer to being resolved

From Jurgen Klopp's perspective, there is no need to fret over the future of Mohamed Salah at Liverpool right now. Publicly, at least. The Reds manager has been fielding a series of questions over his top marksman in recent weeks and has continually exuded an air of calm over the contract impasse.

Despite the prospect of Salah leaving Anfield as a free agent in the summer of 2023, Klopp is not outwardly concerned that this issue will not eventually resolve itself.

"Mo expects this club to be ambitious," Klopp said earlier this month. "We cannot do much more. It is Mo's decision. It is all fine from my point of view. Nothing happened further, no signing or rejection. We just have to wait, there's no rush."

Within hours of that answer, given at a pre-match press conference to preview Liverpool's trip to Brighton, Salah's agent, Ramy Abbas, was raising eyebrows with seven well-timed and well-placed laughing emojis.

The tweet was clearly aimed at Klopp's claim that the ball was in Salah's court - a stance that was directly at odds with repeated soundbites from the player himself this season that he was waiting for the club to sort out his future at Anfield.

Within hours, a report came from renowned transfer journalist Fabrizio Romano that talks had broken down between the club and Salah's representatives and it didn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out the source of the Italian reporter's information given both he and Abbas had been seen chatting across Twitter just a few weeks earlier.

That is not to suggest that the information is incorrect, however. Given that there is no new Salah contract to write about, the idea that all is "fine" - to quote Klopp - is a fanciful one to believe. Clearly, there is a situation that needs to be resolved here.

Salah already among Liverpool's all-time greats

Arsenal v Liverpool - Premier League

Salah, if his public declarations are to be taken at face value, wants to remain with Liverpool beyond next summer. Speaking in October, he said: "It doesn’t depend on me, but if you asked me I would love to stay until the last day of my football (career).

"But I can’t say much about that, it’s not in my hands. It depends on what the club wants. It doesn’t depend on me. At the moment, I can’t see myself ever playing against Liverpool. That would make me sad."

And of course everyone at Liverpool would dearly love a player who is now inside the top 10 scorers of all time at Anfield to remain for as long as possible.

But the fact that both player and club want to preserve the status quo does not necessarily mean that it automatically happens at Liverpool. Gini Wijnaldum acts as a cautionary tale there.