Roma chief admit Mo Salah was sold on cheap to Liverpool at £36.9m after stunning run of form

ROMA have admitted Mo Salah was sold on the cheap to Liverpool.

The Egyptian, 25, has scored 30 goals since arriving at Anfield from the Italian capital in a £36.9million deal, which could rise to £45m.

Salah, sold by Chelsea to Roma for £12m in 2016, reached his latest landmark in the 5-0 hammering of Porto.

And Roma director of sport Monchi, who joined from Sevilla last April, said: “I still think the price could’ve been better for Salah, but it did give us the possibility of making other moves.

“When I arrived, the Liverpool offer for Salah was €32m plus €3m in bonuses. In today’s football, players go wherever they want to.

“At the end of the day, we could reach €50m with bonuses, but at that moment we had to sell and that was an important option.

“The Neymar and Kylian Mbappe transfers changed the market, but at that moment it was necessary that we sell.

“The figures are important, because at the end of the day we are a business, but the fans cannot be bought.

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“In my years at Sevilla, people counted the trophies and those are so far missing at Roma.”

Roma refused to sell Edin Dzeko to Chelsea but Monchi confirmed they were interested in Arsenal’s Olivier Giroud.

He added: “We started talking to Chelsea about Emerson and only later did Edin’s name enter the conversation.

“They made us an offer and we replied with a new proposal. The English club never satisfied our demands and that is why the negotiations were not finalised.

“No club is happy to sell its best players, but if an important economic offer arrives, it’s impossible not to evaluate it.

“We certainly would’ve signed an important striker to replace him, perhaps Giroud, because otherwise the fans would quite rightly have been angry.

“We have a lot of faith in Patrik Schick and Gregoire Defrel, but we would 100 per cent have signed another forward if Dzeko had left in January.

“Along with Giroud, there was also the option of Michy Batshuayi. People talk about Schick being expensive, but so far we have only spent €6m on him and that is very important for us. He is a centre-forward who can also play on the wing.”