Liverpool have made Mo Salah one of the best paid players in the Premier League - and ruined another critique of Manchester City's spending.
After months of speculation and worry over whether their Egyptian king would sign a new deal at Anfield, Friday brought the announcement out of the blue that the 30-year-old would be staying. And it quickly became clear that the player had been given his wish of being paid a salary to match his value in the league in order to break the deadlock - giving the man considered on Merseyside as the best in the division at least one of the biggest salaries.
Salah's new deal will see him earn close to £400,000 per week, according to reputable reports, which makes him not just the best-paid player in Liverpool's history but also one of the highest earners in the league. Some have him as the outright top earner ahead of Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland, but it is indisputable that Liverpool are now doing something else that until recently they proudly insisted that they didn't.
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City and Liverpool have been the dominant forces in English football for the past four seasons, and in the midst of another gripping title race it was regularly pointed out that only one point has separated them since the beginning of the 2018/19 season - City earning 358 to Liverpool's 357 but winning three titles to one. This expertly reveals the fine margins that have separated the teams, but is also an artificial deadline: roll it back another year and the gap is 26 points; consider all of Pep Guardiola's time in England and it is greater still; measure from when Jurgen Klopp arrived and it is even bigger.
The point of that is to say that timelines can be deliberately picked to best suit the narrative, and that has often been the case as City and Liverpool fans have argued over finances. Despite their brilliance, the Blues have been unable to shift the notion that their success has been bought by unparalleled wealth while Liverpool have held onto their coattails thanks to the alchemy of transfer doyen Michael Edwards turning magic beans into Premier League bargains.
Taking the arbitrary marker of the 2018/19 season that was picked specifically for points, City have spent £83m more than Liverpool to date on their first team squad. That is still a significant amount, and Scousers will inevitably start shouting about net spend at this point of the Philippe Coutinho money or the City purchases to come this summer, but while there is no argument that Guardiola has spent more the idea that the two clubs are competing financially in different leagues is long outdated.
That particular penny finally seemed to be dropping this summer when Liverpool splashed out £64m on Darwin Nunez to mean they have spent more than double their rivals in 2022 so far. However, the caveat of wages was still used to keep Jurgen Klopp and his men on the moral high ground: basically, even if Liverpool outspent City in transfer fees their wage bill would still be lower so they were still the underdogs.
Again, this is strictly true - results for the 2020/21 season put Liverpool's wage bill at £314m annually compared to City's £355m - but their wages had increased over a four-year period by £107m over the past four years which was at the same level as City and Chelsea. Judging by Salah's new deal, it will go up again in the coming years.
City still outspend Liverpool but a rivalry that has been remarkably close on the pitch has also been getting more equal in the boardroom - since claiming he would rather quit football than £100m on a player, Klopp has broken the world record fees for a central defender, a goalkeeper, and has signed a forward this summer for a price that could rise to £85m.
That isn't a bad thing either: spending big money well is an art, and something that United have been spectacularly bad at for the last decade to fall so far behind their rivals. But the business at Anfield this summer has surely proven that the days of lazy claims that nobody can compete financially with City are well and truly dead.
When City and Liverpool face off in the Community Shield, they will never have been more equal as rivals.
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