Champions League qualification is not a given with Salah either.
Your position is based firmly on your certainty that the Saudis will return with the same or more money further down the line. If that were guaranteed, I'd be inclined to agree with you. It would be madness to sell your best player when you could guarantee a gargantuan sum for him in six months or a year, with time to plan for his succession. But it's not guaranteed, for all sorts of reasons, and that's the crux of it really.
I can’t see Saudi stopping now they’ve started - and as has been discussed before, Salah is not just any player, he’s essential to them.
This isn’t a fad for them - they’re making a play to somehow establish the Saudi ProbLeague as one of the top Leagues in the world and there’s a long term aim of hosting the World Cup - we know this - it’s documented.
I’m pretty sure they’ll be back in January and next summer - might be a bigger offer, might not.
You’re absolutely right - nothing is a given, CL qualification is not certain with him - but there’s a better chance of it. He’s fit, rarely gets injured and despite talk of him not being the player he was - his output has not diminished.
If we’d planned for this, signed a replacement of some sort - even if it had been Bakayoko - then I’d probably agree with cashing in on him - but we haven’t.
Like I said - I’d happily keep him till his contract expires if it means we get the same output from him as he’s consistently delivered o et his time at Anfield.
Having money to spend on replacements doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll make good choices - I’m not confident we have the people in place to make the most of the £200m we likely have available.
Again - if you look at it from a purely commercial sense - he actually is worth more to us in short sales, exposure, whatever - than most players we’re likely to bring in.
There’s all sorts of layers to this - if the fee mitigates against them all - then yep sell and accept the consequences.
I just feel that the negative consequences of not selling outweigh the negative consequences of selling right now with no chance of replacing him.