Sadio Mane £35m Liverpool truth impossible to ignore as FSG ruthless streak continues

Sadio Mane leaves Liverpool a club legend.

A record of 120 goals in 269 appearances in all competitions and a medal haul that has included the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup, League Cup, FIFA Club World Cup and UEFA Super Cup ensures that the 30-year-old Senegalese has done enough to be placed alongside the very best of those to have represented the club.

All good things come to an end, however, and while the joy at Liverpool landing the next generation in Darwin Nunez for a fee that could rise to as much as £85m, the week ended on sad note as Mane, such an important part of what Jurgen Klopp has created at Liverpool, departed the club and headed to the Bundesliga to sign with Bayern Munich in a £35m deal.

For Liverpool, while the arguments can undoubtedly be made as to whether losing such a player makes competitive sense in the shorter term, taking a longer-term view on what happens on and off the field means that it was probably a deal that was too good to turn down.

Player trading has always been the Fenway Sports Group way. The outlay on new signings has historically been aided in no small part by the sale of players after their value had risen, with Philippe Coutinho and his £142m move to Barcelona that facilitated the transformational deals for Alisson Becker and Virgil van Dijk the most obvious example of that.

The move for Nunez, while something that the club can finance without too many pieces having to be moved around given that the fee will be amortised over the life of his six-year contract, is one that the club will want to try and chip away some of the cost of from the disposal of player registrations and transfer fees raised. Mane was a valuable asset to Liverpool whose performance levels had not