Players have a lot of power but most clubs won’t allow a player of such high value to run his contract down and leave for nothing. Any smart club will offer players an ultimatum when they have two years remaining, either sign an extension or be sold. Funnily enough Liverpool have allowed Van Dijk, Salah and TAA to enter the final 12 months of their contracts which is stupid. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with those three.
Maybe now the international tournaments are over we’ll start to see more transfer activity, it has been a very quiet window so far. Liverpool need at least three new players to compete for the big prizes.
There are some players you cannot force to renew their contracts especially if they are important to the club. We saw that happen in the case of Mbappe in PSG where the club did everything possible to make him renew his contract but they failed. Players like Mo Salah and Van Dijk are senior players that Liverpool cannot force to renew their contracts. These players have also given the best service to Liverpool over the years so the club needs to respect their decisions. These players might not want to continue with Liverpool and renewing contracts might reduce the opportunity to attract better clubs or get a more lucrative contract.
The European Nations and Copa America really slowed the transfer market. Hopefully, activities in the market will increase in the next few weeks before the start of a new season.