Liverpool FC news: Crisis 'will set club back five years'

Liverpool find themselves in a contract situation of enormous proportions, one no one has seen for years and the consequences could be dire.

Mohamed Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold are all in the last season of their contracts and the prospect of losing one if not all of them next season is increasingly likely.

As such, Liverpool fans and rival fans around the world are in trepidation about where the club will be in the next few years, because mistakes of their own doing may leave them high and dry, without a backup plan.

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The glue that holds the team together

All three players have been at the club for a significant amount of time, and life without seeing such a world-class player in their position is likely to be incredibly bizarre, resulting in fan reactions of heartbreak and deep frustration.

Salah is at the top end of the goals and assists columns for the Premier League once again and the numbers are immense given the season is only 11 games old.

He's got 10 goals and 10 assists in all competitions, with eight goals and six assists coming domestically in the league. Add in the contributions from Cody Gakpo, Luis Diaz, Diogo Jota and Darwin Nunez, and you will find a Liverpool attack that is firing on all cylinders.

Elsewhere, you have Van Dijk, who has formed a formidable partnership with Ibrahima Konate at the back, ensuring only 10 goals have been conceded in the Reds' opening 17 games, much improved on last season's frenetic defending that left the team conceding the opening goal on several occasions.

And then you have Trent, who has worked tirelessly on his defending this year to assist in making sure Liverpool's dominant performances leave the opposition with barely a sniff at goal, all whilst attacking at will and delivering key passes into the forwards.

Now, imagine a team without those three. Who would come to mind in replacing them? How feasible is it for the club to transition smoothly?

This is the task that awaits Liverpool's executives, the coaches and the players alongside them.

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Slot's Liverpool project to be set back five years

Speaking on the most recent episode of his podcast, Fozcast, former Premier League goalkeeper Ben Foster made a damning indictment about Liverpool.

He said: "If Liverpool lose Trent, Virgil and Mo Salah, or even if they lose two of them, then that can set Liverpool back five years.

"You can't replace the best player in the world just like that and you can't replace the best Premier League centre-back for the last five to six years.

"Even Trent, who hasn't even come to the peak of his powers yet, it's impossible to replace. You're talking £150million for each one of them if you want to replace them. Simple as that."

If the contract negotiations fall apart, is is a possibility given the lack of concrete news surrounding any breakthrough in negotiations, then Liverpool will find themselves having to somehow rebuild the spine of their team.

Their best homegrown talent in a generation, the best winger perhaps in Premier League history, and one of the best defenders the world has ever seen.

Of course, teams move on, and no one is under the impression that any of the players was to stay on Merseyside forever, but it's incredibly difficult to even fathom how the club would recruit to remain anywhere near their current level, despite the significant losses.

Fans alike will put off thinking about it until they are required to when the necessary announcements of contract extension or collapsed negotiations are released, but the ramifications are set to be enormous, whichever way the club deals with the situation.

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