Before deciding what kind of contract to offer Mohamed Salah, one of the main dilemmas Liverpool have been weighing up is his age and for how long he will remain at this world-class level.
Many players over the age of 30 experience a decline, especially attackers who have made the most of their pace throughout their prime. But the form that 32-year-old Salah has been in this season – becoming the first player in Premier League history to reach double figures of both goals and assists by Christmas – means any talk of a new deal for the Egyptian King at Anfield has been justified.
Club captain Virgil van Dijk, 33, has also been in fine form at the back as he too aims to extend his stay with Liverpool beyond the end of the current season.
But what has happened before when Liverpool have extended their commitment to a player aged 30 or above? Here, TEAMtalk takes a look at the 10 most recent players in that bracket to have been rewarded with new deals by the club – and how they performed after.
Adrian (2023)
In June 2023, Liverpool confirmed what would turn out to be their final contract renewal for third-choice goalkeeper Adrian, whose only appearance the previous season had been to help them win the Community Shield.
Aged 36 when he put pen to paper, Adrian remained third in command for his final Liverpool season and failed to make any appearances.
He has since returned to his former club Real Betis, where he has been the preferred keeper in the UEFA Conference League but a backup domestically.
Mohamed Salah (2022)
Salah renewing his Liverpool deal beyond 2025 would not be the first time the club have secured his signature as a 30-something.
Back in 2022, they made the bold move to make Salah their best-paid player of all time, giving the forward a three-year contract worth £350,000 per week despite him having just turned 30.
It was a significant increase from his previous £200,ooo-per-week deal and almost triple what he originally earned when he joined the club from Roma in 2017 (£120,000 per week).
And it’s fair to say Salah has justified Liverpool’s continued faith in him. He scored 30 goals in the 2022-23 season, 25 in 2023-24, and has 18 to his name already by Christmas 2024.
Since his last contract extension, Salah has helped Liverpool win the Community Shield and the Carabao Cup. He was named Liverpool’s Players’ Player of the Season for 2023-24, and the Premier League Player of the Month for a fifth and sixth time respectively in October 2023 and November 2024.
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James Milner (2022)
Jurgen Klopp was a huge fan of James Milner’s leadership, cultivated over his years of experience playing in the Premier League.
When Milner penned his last Liverpool contract in June 2022, he was 36 years old and preparing for his 21st season in the top flight.
The versatile midfielder had played for Liverpool 39 times during the previous season and actually was relied upon for even more matches by Klopp in 2022-23, playing in 43 games (although only 12 of those were starts and his minutes decreased from 1379 to 1285).
However, Milner was released at the end of his eighth season with Liverpool and went on to join Brighton instead.
Jordan Henderson (2021)
Jordan Henderson was an even more trusted member of Liverpool’s leadership group, having held the captaincy since 2015.
In August 2021, a decade after he joined the club from Sunderland, a 31-year-old Henderson committed his future to Liverpool in what was described by the club as a long-term deal.
By the end of that season, Henderson had lifted two more trophies, as Liverpool won the Carabao Cup and the FA Cup, while finishing as runners up in the Premier League and Champions League. The midfielder was their most-used player with 57 appearances across all competitions.
However, his fortunes deteriorated the following season, despite Klopp still giving him 43 appearances. Henderson left Liverpool in 2023, joining Steven Gerrard’s Al-Ettifaq in a £12 move to Saudi Arabia.
Virgil van Dijk (2021)
Like with Salah, Liverpool are also hoping that Van Dijk will sign a second contract renewal with the club beyond the age of 30.
Van Dijk has spent his prime years at Liverpool after joining as a 26-year-old from Southampton in January 2018. Over the rest of his 20s, the defender became a Champions League winner, Premier League champion and was twice named in the PFA Premier League Team of the Year, among other accolades.
Things reached a low point in October 2020 when Van Dijk suffered an ACL injury, but Liverpool retained faith he would get back to his best, so a month after his 30th birthday, they gave him a new four-year contract in August 2021.
Since then, he has added medals from the FA Cup (once) and EFL Cup (twice) to his cabinet, alongside being in the PFA Premier League Team of the Year on another two occasions.
Van Dijk was appointed as the successor to Henderson as Liverpool’s captain in 2023 and, now 33, entered the final year of his £220,000-per-week contract at the dawn of this season.
Virgil van Dijk’s Liverpool honours and how much he played on their road to winning them
Adrian (2021)
Adrian had been picked up by Liverpool in 2019 after his spell with West Ham, at which point he was already 32 years of age.
By the time he signed a new deal in the summer of 2021, he was still their second-choice keeper, just about – but Caoimhin Kelleher was on the verge of overtaking him in the pecking order.
The Spaniard subsequently only played once the following season, and as stated above, once in the season after as well.
James Milner (2019)
Milner’s dependability since joining Liverpool in 2015 – at which stage he was already 29 – was rewarded in December 2019 when his deal with the club was renewed, a month before his 34th birthday.
From that point on, Milner would remain with Liverpool for another three-and-a-half years, earning another contract renewal as detailed above along the way.
Six months after signing his fresh Liverpool contract, Milner became a Premier League champion with the club by the end of the 2019-20 season. However, he never scored for the club beyond that season, thus finishing up on a tally of 26 goals in the famous red colours.
His service to the club was commendable, though, and he served with distinction as their vice-captain throughout his stay.
Martin Skrtel (2015)
With Liverpool since January 2008, when he was a 23-year-old untested in the Premier League, Martin Skrtel became a cult hero for the Reds.
By the 2011-12 season, he had become a League Cup winner and was also named the club’s Player of the Year, prompting Liverpool to reward him with a new contract.
A few years later, in July 2015, a now-30-year-old Skrtel, who still had a year to run on his deal at Anfield, pledged his long-term future to the club with a fresh three-year contract.
Alas, he left in the summer of 2016 as would have occurred under his previous contract anyway, after falling down the pecking order since Klopp’s appointment.
Yet rather than losing him for free, Liverpool are believed to have banked £5m by selling him to Fenerbahce after his 320-game spell on Merseyside.
Kolo Toure (2015)
Skrtel was the second senior centre-back to commit his future to Liverpool that summer, following in the footsteps of Kolo Toure.
Toure was 32 when he joined Liverpool from Manchester City in 2013 on a two-year deal. Over those next two seasons, Brendan Rodgers played him 45 times.
In May 2015, a couple of months after his 34th birthday, the defender agreed to remain with Liverpool for another year, which would allow him to score his first and only goal for the club in February 2016.
Liverpool released Toure at the end of the season, during which they had replaced Rodgers with Klopp. All 14 of his Premier League appearances that season came under Klopp, but he later reunited with Rodgers at Celtic.
Steven Gerrard (2013)
All good things, even great things, must come to an end, and that was no different for the extraordinary Liverpool career of Steven Gerrard.
In July 2013, the legendary Liverpool captain signed a new contract with his hometown club until 2015. At the time of his renewal, he was 33 years old and already had 630 appearances for the club behind him, which meant he was eighth on their all-time top appearances chart.
After the next two years covered by his new contract, Gerrard had risen to third after playing 80 more times. That timeframe also enabled him to become Liverpool’s longest-serving captain and join the Premier League 100 club, ending up fifth on the club’s all-time top scorers list (though he has since been nudged back down to sixth courtesy of Mohamed Salah).
Sadly, his infamous slip against Chelsea in April 2014 also became synonymous with his later Liverpool years, as he missed out on the chance to win a Premier League title with the club. Nevertheless, Gerrard ended the season top of the Premier League assists chart.
That November, Liverpool reached out to Gerrard about a new deal, but it was too late in the skipper’s mind, so in January, he announced he would leave at the end of the season, influenced by his share of gametime starting to decrease. He saw out his career in MLS with LA Galaxy.
