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The heavy competition to sign players in today's market has led to clubs dishing out hundreds of thousands of pounds in order to ensure that they get their player before anyone else. This has meant that the standard wages of yesteryear, which were around £70,000 a week, have almost doubled since then.
It is the Premier League, especially, where players earn astronomical amounts of money per week, primarily because agents of players that the clubs are interested in will often use the fact that EPL teams get almost £100m revenue from TV alone to force through a decision to give the individual a huge salary. As, after all, they can easily afford it. Naturally, it's not an expenditure Premier League sides want to pay out, but their ginormous wealth is no longer a secret.
Certain leagues like the MLS have capped wages, but this means that the clubs there are unable to lure the best talent from around the world to play for them because they don't have the cash to tempt them. This is one of the main reasons why the Premier League is filled to the brim with some of the best players in the world: players are signed up with contracts that include wages of £100,000 and up, yet no one bats an eyelid anymore.
With that being said, let's take a look at five of Liverpool's highest paid players and see just how much they earn.
All information regarding player salaries is taken from Silly Season.
#5 Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain -- £120,000-per-week
In at number five is former Arsenal man Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, who signed for Liverpool in a deal worth £34.2m at the start of last season. "The Ox" had many clubs interested in him after it was revealed that he was unsettled at the Emirates, but Liverpool made sure that they were the frontrunners to sign him.
Just recently, however, Oxlade-Chamberlain suffered a knee injury that is set to rule him out for the vast majority of the 2018-19 Premier League campaign. This is a prime example of the risk clubs take when they sign up players on excessive wages; if they get injured or suspended, the club waste their money.
#4 Naby Keita -- £120,000-per-week
Naby Keita was one of Liverpool's many big-money signings this summer, having paid £54m to RB Leipzig for his services. The deal for Keita was actually agreed in August 2017, but did not go through until July 1st, 2018, as Leipzig were desperate to cling onto him for another year.
Everybody knows Liverpool are a wealthy club, so when agents of players negotiate personal terms with the club's representatives, they know how high they can go in terms of wages. It's not as if the Reds can say they can't afford it, because that would be a flagrant lie.
Money had a lot to do with the move. ESPN reported that RB Leipzig were simply unable to pay wages in excess of €10m, whereas Liverpool were more than capable of doing so. Such are the perils of competing with a Premier League side.
#3 Fabinho -- £130,000-per-week
Fabinho was signed this summer from AS Monaco for £39.3m. A deal was agreed that would see him earn £130,000-per-week, which is a far cry from the €49,000-per-week he was on at Monaco.
He joined Liverpool the same week as Naby Keita, and the pair are undoubtedly going to be a dominant threat in the Reds' midfield this season.
Fabinho is a defensive midfielder, which is a position that was only really filled by Jordan Henderson before this point. Fabinho will add depth to the squad and probably be utilised either alongside Henderson, or as a back-up option.
#2 Virgil Van Dijk -- £180,000-per-week
Prying the Dutch defender from Southampton proved to be a very difficult task. The Saints were determined to hold on to the centre-back for as long as they could. But their efforts were to be in vain, as in January last season, Van Dijk finally joined Liverpool for a whopping £70m.
In order to persuade him to join, the Reds knew that they would have to offer a lot more than Van Dijk was being paid at Southampton (£145,000-per-week), so they handed him £35,000 extra, which saw the deal go through almost immediately.
#1 Mohamed Salah -- £200,000-per-week
Salah broke the record of goals scored in a 38-game Premier League season last year, which was previously held by three players: Alan Shearer, Cristiano Ronaldo and Luis Suarez, who all netted 31. Salah managed to score 32.
It didn't come as a surprise, then, when the Egyptian was offered a new contract that would make him the highest paid Liverpool player by far at a staggering £200,000-per-week.
As the Reds' most important player, it makes sense for Salah to be at the top of the wage pile. This is also a big incentive for him to stay at Liverpool and dismiss offers from the major clubs who showed interest in him before.
