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Maguire: Liverpool happy to make £20m+ Keita loss due to accountancy trick
The money men at Liverpool will not feel too hard done by if they sell Naby Keita at a net loss this summer because of the amortisation of the player.
That is according to finance guru and new Football Insider columnist Kieran Maguire, speaking exclusively after this site revealed that Liverpool expect to receive less than £30m for Keita if they decide to sell up in summer.
The Guinean midfielder arrived at Anfield from RB Leipzig in a £52.75m deal in 2018 but has endured a stop-start Liverpool career thus far.
Football Insider revealed earlier this week that Liverpool chiefs will hold crunch talks over Keita’s future this summer with his price tag crashing below the £30m mark.
Maguire doesn’t think Liverpool’s balance sheets would suffer too much if they were to let the 25-year-old go at a £20m+ loss three years later.
He cites amortisation, the practice of spreading the cost of a player’s transfer fee and total wages over the length of his contract.
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“Frankly, they are in a position to be able to write off players like this,” he told Football Insider correspondent Adam Williams.
“From an accounting point of view, because of their amortisation policy, they’ve written off a significant amount of his value anyway. They will be focusing on trying to minimise the cost to them going forwards.
“So if he stayed for a couple of years being little more than a bench warmer, you then have to write off the remainder of his fees as you come to the end of his contract.
“Sometimes you’ve just got to bite the bullet and accept that you’re going to make a loss on the individual transaction. But it won’t go through as a significant loss in the accounts and it will save them wages going forward.”
Keita has made 71 appearances in Liverpool colours but has missed a further 49 games through illness or injury.
He has been sidelined with an ankle problem since December with his last appearance coming in the 7-0 pounding of Crystal Palace.
In other news, Paul Robinson has an intriguing take on Alisson and what may have gone wrong after his calamitous performance against Manchester City.