For the first time since Mo Salah arrived in 2017 to complete Liverpool's famed attacking trident, serious questions must be asked of that particular unit. 

Since Christmas, only Sadio Mane has scored for the champions and neither of those two or Roberto Firmino has registered an assist since the 7-0 demolition of Crystal Palace on the 12th of December. 

Speaking on the idea of the trio breaking up, Rory Smith of The New York Times delivered an interesting theory. 

After Sam Wallace of The Daily Telegraph suggested neither Real Madrid or Barcelona could afford Salah despite his links with a move to Spain, Smith revealed he believed Liverpool may be at a loss as a result. 

He theorised that a big part of the club's financial model could have been to sell either the Egyptian or Mane between 2020 and 2022 in order to raise funds ahead of another rebuild after a relatively long time with largely the same team.

With one avenue potentially off the cards, Liverpool might have to think again. 

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GIVEMESPORT's Jonathan Gorrie says...

Liverpool have certainly enjoyed success with that kind of move before.

The January 2018 sale of Philippe Coutinho helped fund moves for Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker, two men who had a transformational effect once arriving at Anfield. 

While the Premier League champions aren't exactly short of money, having spent an apparent £71m in a post-pandemic summer market, captailising on either Mane or Salah (both are valued at over £100m by Transfermarkt) as they approach their 30s would have made an awful lot of sense financially. 

After so long together, a dip in form naturally raises questions about a team potentially coming to the end of its cycle.

Clearly, there's a long way to go before such dramatic assumptions can definitively be made but Manchester City suffered a similar fate last season, before conducting a relatively large rebuild this summer. 

With the chances of banking big money for any of their stars looking remote given the current financial landscape of the game, what Liverpool do next will certainly be interesting.