Mohamed Salah's cheap price tag is justified, says AS Sporting Director Monchi

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Rome, March 30: AS Roma famous Sporting director has backed himself for the sale of Mohamed Salah to Liverpool for a bargain deal as he claimed that he had to sell him fast to balance the books.

Salah joined Liverpool from Roma this season for €42 million what now seems like a steal.

The Liverpool forward has scored the most number of league goals among Europe's top five leagues and currently is the English Premier League top scorer with 28 goals in 30 games. He Overall also has 36 goals in 40 matches in all competitions this season, just behind Cristiano Ronaldo in the goalscoring boots.

Salah's current value is 162.8 million euros, according to the CIES Football Observatory. And amidst all the talks, that how football mastermind Monchi let the player's go for such a cheap deal, the Serie A side's director now has revealed the motivations behind selling Mohamed Salah to Liverpool last summer.

Monchi suggested that the market got influenced after the transfer of Neymar which happened following the deal of Salah and should he be sold after the Neymar deal, he could definitely demand more transfer fee for the player.

However, during Salah's transfer situation, the club was not in a state to wait for a longer duration as his side were facing potential financial fair play penalties from UEFA.

Thus to balance their books by the end of June Roma needed to sell some players and the Salah sale eventually then eradicated a prominent part of the club's deficit.

"On Salah there are two important things to understand," Monchi said at Rome's Foreign Press Association. "First, Salah was sold before the Neymar effect revolutionized the market. Second, we had a necessity to sell Salah before June 30."

"Anyone who understands a bit of this business knows that that's like having a sword pointed at your neck," Monchi said. "So taking into account these two conditions, I think we made a sale that was fairly big."

"True, he then became an incredible player and with the Neymar effect and Mbappe, Dembele, Coutinho, he surely demands a higher price now," Monchi said. "But these two things are important to understand. Otherwise, it seems that Monchi is a bit blind."

Salah as of now has already nearly doubled his goal tally of 15 goals for Roma in Serie A last season which was eventually a career-high for Egypt attacker. The 25-year-old also could well break the Premier League all-time goal-scoring record which is of 31 goals.

The player is currently on 28 and with eight games still to play it can be said that history can be made this season by the speedy winger.