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With the departure of Sadio Mane, I must admit I’m fascinated by the situation now facing Liverpool over his partner in crime Mohamed Salah.

I won’t pretend to know what’s going on with his contract, but clearly the answer is: nothing much. And that leaves so many questions unanswered. One thing is obvious, the club has done some very clear, precise and unemotional calculations with Mane. He’s 31 in April, has a huge amount of running in his legs, and wanted a huge contract as one of the best players in the world.

I don’t blame him for that. Mane is the equal of virtually every world class star at the moment, and rightly wanted that recognition with the going rate for the last big contract of his career.

What Liverpool so obviously did though, was run their analytics - which to their credit they do so well - and decided selling him to buy Darwin Nunez and keep their wage structure in place was the right thing for the club. It begs the question, what calculations have they run on Salah?

Again, I don’t know all the answers, but what screams out to me so clearly, is they won’t be breaking their wage structure to keep him. If they were prepared to do that, it would have happened by now. But look, I can’t blame Salah for wanting the going rate, just like Mane did. He’s the Premier League Golden Boot winner, he’s the Footballer of the Year and in with a great shout of