Three of Liverpool's biggest stars are out of contract soon but Arne Slot is still smiling about it

Mohamad Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold have entered the final months of their contracts at Liverpool and can leave as free agents at the end of the season.

Yet, manager Arne Slot still found time to joke about the situation on Friday when quizzed about their futures.

“It’s the same boring answer as always and I could really understand if you ask me this once every two weeks but if you ask me this after two or three days again then you still get the same answer and people feel that I’m boring them,” Slot told reporters at his media conference ahead of Saturday's game against Crystal Palace. “So, try it after the international break again.”

Questions about Salah, Van Dijk and Alexander-Arnold will only grow as the season goes on and their contracts run down. All three will be able to talk to potential suitors outside of England from January.

All three are Liverpool icons given their roles in leading the Merseyside club to its first league title in 30 years in 2020 and having won the Champions League the season before.

Alexander-Arnold is a home-grown talent and, at the age of 26, a player whose best years are likely ahead of him.

In the cases of Salah, 32, and Van Dijk, 33, Liverpool are dealing with players at the latter stages of their careers, who are unlikely to have any sell-on value if handed long-term deals.

Those are factors that Liverpool executives such as football CEO Michael Edwards will have to consider.

Salah, who has consistently been linked with a move to the Saudi League, has been in outstanding form this season, with six goals in nine games as Liverpool has risen to the top of the Premier League and made a perfect start in the Champions League. If he is not to be offered a new deal, a January move would be a final chance to realize a financial return on the forward, who cost around $50 million when signed from Roma in 2017.

That would have a potentially detrimental impact on Liverpool's season, while Salah would also miss out on a hefty signing bonus he would be able to negotiate as a free agent.

The same applies with Van Dijk, who is Liverpool's captain and remains a rock at the heart of the defense.

Salah said he is treating this like his last season at the club, while Van Dijk has said he is calm about his position.

Liverpool spent around $150 million in total to sign the duo, who were so pivotal to its success under former manager Jurgen Klopp, and it would likely cost well in excess of that to replace them with like-for-like players.

All three players have been important to what has been such a promising start for Slot since he succeeded Klopp in the offseason.

And Slot was keen Friday to focus on maintaining that form, rather than contract discussions.

Liverpool can move four points clear at the top by beating Palace in the early kickoff, before defending champion Manchester City and Arsenal play later in the day.

There was no danger, he said, of his team getting carried away with its early success under him.

“We are Liverpool, so players are used to being on top of the league,” he said. “It would be very weird if a player at Liverpool is all of a sudden with his head in the clouds.”

James Robson is at https://twitter.com/jamesalanrobson

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Liverpool's Trent Alexander-Arnold warms up prior to the English Premier League soccer match between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Liverpool at the Molineux Stadium in Wolverhampton, England, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Rui Vieira)

Liverpool's Virgil van Dijk warms up prior to the Champions League soccer match between Liverpool and Bologna at the Anfield stadium in Liverpool, England, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Ian Hodgson)

Liverpool's Mohamed Salah celebrates after scoring his side's second goal during the Champions League soccer match between Liverpool and Bologna at the Anfield stadium in Liverpool, England, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Ian Hodgson)

Liverpool's manager Arne Slot celebrates at the end of the Champions League soccer match between Liverpool and Bologna at the Anfield stadium in Liverpool, England, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Ian Hodgson)

Liverpool's manager Arne Slot smiles after Cody Gakpo scored their fourth goal during the English League Cup soccer match between Liverpool and West Ham United at Anfield Stadium, Liverpool, England, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

LONDON (AP) — A car-ramming at a Christmas market in Germany, which police are treating as an attack, is the latest in a grim series of events in which vehicles have been used as deadly weapons.

There have been a spate of such attacks over the past decade, some committed by groups but most by individuals. The motives – where they could be established – have varied widely. Some were inspired by Islamic militant groups such as al-Qaida and ISIS, which encouraged followers to carry out low-cost, low-tech attacks with cars and trucks. Others have been linked to mental illness, far-right extremism and online misogyny.

What law-enforcement authorities term “vehicle as a weapon attacks” have reshaped cities around the world, as planners erect concrete barriers around public spaces and build anti-vehicle obstacles into new developments.

Here are some major vehicle attacks:

MAGDEBURG, Germany, Dec. 20. 2024 — At least five people are killed and more than 200 injured when a car slams into a Christmas market in eastern Germany. The suspect, who was arrested, is a 50-year-old doctor originally from Saudi Arabia who had expressed anti-Muslim views and support for the far-right AFD party.

ZHUHAI, China, Nov. 11, 2024 — A 62-year-old driver rams his car into people exercising at a sports complex in southern China, killing 35 people in the country’s deadliest mass slaying in years. Authorities said the perpetrator was upset about his divorce but offered few other details.

LONDON, Ontario, June 6, 2021 — Four members of a Muslim family die when an attacker hits them with a pickup truck while they are out for a walk, in what Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calls “a terrorist attack, motivated by hatred.” White nationalist attacker Nathaniel Veltman was sentenced to life in prison.

TORONTO, April 23, 2018 — A 25-year-old Canadian man, Alek Minassian, drives a rented van into mostly female pedestrians on Yonge St., the main thoroughfare in Toronto, killing 10 people and injuring 16. Minassian told police he belonged to the online “incel” community of sexually frustrated men.

NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2017 — Sayfullo Saipov, an Islamic extremist from Uzbekistan, drives a pickup truck onto a popular New York City bike path, killing eight.

BARCELONA, Aug. 17, 2017 — A man driving a van slams into people on the Spanish city’s crowded Las Ramblas boulevard, killing 14 and injuring many others. Several members of the same cell carry out a similar vehicle attack in the nearby resort town of Cambrils before they are shot dead by police. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia, Aug. 12, 2017 — During a “Unite the Right” rally, white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. intentionally drives his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one woman and injuring dozens of people.

LONDON: March 22, 2017 — British man Khalid Masood rams an SUV into people on Westminster Bridge, killing four, before stabbing to death a policeman guarding the Houses of Parliament nearby. He is shot dead. June 3, 2017 — three attackers drive a van at pedestrians on London Bridge before stabbing people in nearby Borough Market. Eight people are killed and the attackers shot dead by police. June 19, 2017 — Darren Osborne, a man radicalized by far-right ideas, drives a van at worshippers outside a mosque in London’s Finsbury Park area, killing one man and injuring 15 people.

MELBOURNE, Australia, Jan 20, 2017 – Six people are killed and more than 30 injured when a car hits lunchtime crowds at a pedestrian mall in Australia’s second-largest city. Perpetrator James Gargasoulas is found to have been in a state of drug-induced psychosis.

BERLIN, December 19, 2016 — Anis Amri, a rejected asylum-seeker from Tunisia, plows a hijacked truck into a Christmas market in the German capital, killing 13 people and injuring dozens. The attacker is killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

NICE, France, July 14, 2016 — Tunisian-born French resident Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drives a rented truck for more than a mile (almost 2 kilometers) along a packed seaside promenade in the French Riviera resort on the Bastille Day holiday, killing 86 people in the deadliest attack of its kind.

APELDOORN, Netherlands, April 28, 2009 – Former security guard Karst Tates drives a car into parade spectators in an attempt to hit an open-topped bus carrying members of the Dutch royal family. Six people are killed and Tates dies of injuries the next day, leaving his full motive a mystery.

CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina, March 3, 2006 — University of North Carolina graduate Mohammed Taheri-Azar drives an SUV into a crowd at the university, lightly injuring nine people, in a self-professed bid to avenge Muslim deaths overseas.

FILE - Injured people are treated in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017 after a white van jumped the sidewalk in the historic Las Ramblas district, crashing into a summer crowd of residents and tourists. (AP Photo/Oriol Duran, File)

FILE - In this April 23, 2018, file photo, police stand near a damaged van after a van mounted a sidewalk crashing into pedestrians in Toronto. (Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Canadian Press via AP, File)

FILE - Forensic officers move the van at Finsbury Park in north London, where a vehicle struck pedestrians in north London Monday, June 19, 2017. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)

FILE - In this Dec. 20, 2016 file photo the trailer of a truck stands beside destroyed Christmas market huts in Berlin, Germany. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, file)

FILE - In this July 14, 2016 file photo, authorities investigate a truck after it plowed through Bastille Day revelers in the French resort city of Nice, France, killing 86 people. (Sasha Goldsmith via AP, File)

FILE - In this Wednesday, March 22, 2017 file photo, police secure the area on the south side of Westminster Bridge close to the Houses of Parliament in London. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

FILE - People fly into the air as a vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. (Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress via AP, File)

FILE - In this Dec. 20, 2016 file photo Christmas decoration sticks in the smashed window of the cabin of a truck which ran into a crowded Christmas market Monday evening killing several people in Berlin, Germany. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, file)