Lynch seemed quite calm and measured when issuing that update on Salah, which appears to hint that he’s confident of the Egyptian eventually agreeing a contract extension at Liverpool.
He might be 33 in June and already the club’s highest-paid player, but you need only look at the incredible numbers that he’s putting up this season to see why Anfield chiefs would be foolish in the extreme to let him leave on a free transfer in the summer.
In 28 games this term he’s netted 21 goals and supplied 17 assists. Out of 19 Premier League matches, there’s been only two in which he hasn’t registered a goal contribution, and the most recent of those was against Crystal Palace in early October (Transfermarkt).
Nor are such figures an outlying phenomenon, either – he’s passed the 20-goal mark in all eight seasons that he’s been at Liverpool, and his tally of 232 is bettered by only three players in the club’s entire history.
Without his goals in the current campaign, the Reds would be 12 points worse off in the top flight and fifth in the table. If all that doesn’t illustrate his continued importance to the team, then what does?
Salah has made it quite clear that he wants to stay put, and all logic would suggest that the smart choice for LFC is to keep him, so we can only assume that there are various contractual details which are dragging out this saga to an uncomfortable extent.
It’s already rumbled on for far too long, so hopefully we’ll soon get the announcement that we’ve all been waiting to hear for months.
Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta has told Bukayo Saka that he wants the winger to use his gut-wrenching injury lay-off as an opportunity to return “a better person”.
The compassionate Spaniard has vowed to help his star forward every step of the way during his recovery and believes that via a mental and physical reset, he will be back stronger than ever in the final months of the season. Saka underwent hamstring surgery in December after suffering a serious injury in the 5-1 victory at Crystal Palace and Arteta has revealed the player is in good spirits having already made several visits to the Sobha Reality Training Centre, though he is not expected to return to action until at least March.
Arteta said: “He’s been around a lot. It’s great to have him. There’s always a smile on his face. He’s going through a period that is unknown for him because he has never been injured for such a long time.
“We have discussed the things we can do together and the things he can do to use the time in the right way to make him a better person, to make sure that he spends the time adequately with the opportunity that he has, so that when he comes back he is in the right place.”
Despite beating Ipswich and Brentford, Saka’s absence is now beginning to weigh heavy on the Gunners, whose attack has struggled for fluency in the past two matches when Arsenal dropped points at Brighton before losing 2-0 to Newcastle in the Carabao Cup semi-final first leg.
He explained: “The answer is that we don’t know. We don’t know, if he had had one or two less games, whether he would not have got injured. Maybe not, because he has done it in the past. Nobody can answer that question. We can have our theories, our feelings, and look at every possible bit of data, but the answer is we don’t know.”
Injuries have plagued Arsenal’s campaign. They also lost captain Martin Odegaard for two months back in September after he suffered an ankle ligament injury while away on international duty with Norway. Right-back Ben White remains sidelined with a knee issue, fellow full-back Takehiro Tomiyasu is yet to play this season while Riccardo Calafiori, Gabriel Martinelli, Declan Rice, Gabriel Magalhaes and Raheem Sterling have also battled fitness problems at various stages of the campaign.
Arteta was clear, however, when asked whether Saka’s absence serves as further inspiration for Arsenal. He said: “We have unfortunately had a lot of players injured so we do it for all of them.
“But we do it for our people and because it is our job and our passion to try to do our best to win football matches.”
