Ideally we will have a secret pre agreement so we can buy someone before they know we have cash to spend. I think spend the money on defenders because that is our next time bomb, I think we have good young attackers. Remembering that Salah will never be that 27 year old player he was, he will decline so we shouldn’t prioritize replacing with what he gives because he won’t give that anymore.
I love all that he did for the club and he will always have a place in the legends wall but we shouldn’t get sentimental. If a player gets older and has nowhere to go maybe, but he would have earned 5-10 times what he is making, if you loved him then that is the best thing for him, we would actually be holding him back. The money the club would get is the motivator, that money would improve us significantly and we should have sold him. Not because I have no loyalty to the player but because I have a loyalty to the team and we need to see the team compete in a money oriented league. I really think that selling him would have been the strong move, not the weak move. Itihad is playing in the club World Cup and they wanted to bolster their team to make the final, my feeling is they would have paid whatever we asked, in January and next year they may not be so motivated.
We had a world class goalie, defense and attack when we won the league, our midfield was the weakest link but they ran a lot to make up for it. We now have a WC goalie, potentially a WC midfield and attack but our defense is not WC anymore and in decline and we need to buy a top quality defender to keep up.
My opinion anyway.