Mo Salah, Liverpool and forgotten Scotland 5-cap who played key role in Anfield coup - is ex-Celtic man next?

Liverpool fans can breathe easy now that their star player Mo Salah has agreed a new two-year contract Anfield after months of concern for the Reds faithful.

Salah’s contract was due to expire at the end of the season and given he has netted 32 goals and provided 22 assists across 47 games this season, there is no understating his value to Liverpool. They stand on the brink of only their second English Premier League title in 35 years.

Concerns had started to mount that Salah would give in to overtures from the Saudi Arabian Pro League, with clubs in that ambitious division prepared to offer the Egyptian forward eye-watering amounts of money to play there.

Liverpool sporting director Richard Hughes, left, was capped five times by Scotland. | SNS Group 0141 221 3602

One of the key negotiators in the Salah’s new deal is Liverpool’s sporting director Richard Hughes, who joined from Bournemouth last season. His name may strike a chord with Scottish football fans, as while he never played football in the top flight here, he was capped five times for the national team between 2004 and 2005.

Born in Glasgow, Hughes was a youth academy prospect at Atalanta and Arsenal played for Bournemouth and Portsmouth, where he gained international recognition. A defensive midfielder, his first cap came against Estonia in 2004. He was also honoured at under-21 level before retiring in 2014.

Hughes rose to prominence behind the scenes at the Cherries, earning his move to Liverpool in 2024. One of his first tasks was to broker negotiations with Salah’s agent Ramy Abbas Issa amid competition from the Gulf and fierce expectations from the Liverpool fans.

Hughes is reported to have kept relations calm and cordial with Salah’s representatives and it is a significant feather in his cap that the decorated marksman has committed his future to Liverpool.

Virgil van Dijk’s Liverpool contract

Now attentions turn to the other end of the pitch. Totemic centre-half Virgil van Dijk is also out of contract at the end of the season and hopes are rising that the former Celtic defender will follow Salah’s lead in pledging his future to Liverpool. Doing so would soften the blow of losing Trent Alexander-Arnold, with the England internationalist right-back set to join Real Madrid for free this summer.

Two out of three would not be bad going for Hughes - and indeed Liverpool manager Arne Slot - in their first full year at Anfield.

Slot admitted it also required the financial backing of owners Fenway Sports Group to get it over the line after deviating from their policy of not handing players over 30 lucrative new contracts, with a cut in the forward’s reported £350,000-a-week wages never on the agenda in discussions.

Mo Salah has penned a new contract at Liverpool. | Liverpool FC via Getty Images

“First of all, it’s Mo’s choice and his agent’s choice and what he wants. Second of all, the club; FSG, Richard, Michael Edwards (FSG’s football chief executive) put a lot of effort to influence that,” said Slot. “Effort mostly means money – but also effort, not only money.

“It gives a positive vibe to the club, maybe a positive vibe we might not need but it’s always good to have positive vibes instead of negative vibes. If you want to sign new players or players who want to extend here, it is always a positive to see one of our star players over the last seven or eight years has made the choice to extend his contract.

“It also shows maybe how ambitious this club is: not only Mo, but the owners. We are really ambitious to keep performing the way this club has performed for so many years.”