More than Erling Haaland? New project places SURPRISE Liverpool star above Man City hero

Liverpool have a surprise player topping Manchester City's Erling Haaland in a new research project. We certainly didn't see this coming.

CIES Football Observatory have a very interesting project right now. They've looked into the 'merit-based' salaries of footballers across Europe to see who should earn what.

The model takes performance, age, league, position and the number of minutes played in order to judge a player. The idea is that it can show whether clubs are getting value for money with their superstars.

Kylian Mbappe tops the lot. He 'should' earn around €22m from Real Madrid and while he actually earns more than that, he's rightfully the best-paid player in European football.

Second is Mo Salah, which somewhat vindicates Liverpool's decision to step out of their wage structure to renew his contract earlier this year. He's followed by Jude Bellingham.

Further down the list, though, things get very interesting. Especially as one Liverpool star sits above Erling Haaland in the rankings.

Cody Gakpo supremacy

The CIES study actually places Cody Gakpo ahead of Haaland in the list. The Dutchman is there in 15th, four places ahead of the City star.

It's largely, from what we can tell, because Gakpo's 'level' is very high. Only eight players perform better there - six of who are Liverpool stars.

Combine that with his availability and his position and Gakpo scores incredibly well in this study. CIES say their model explains 83 per cent of the variance in salaries, which is reasonably high, and that model certainly likes Gakpo.

The Reds did move to renew his contract earlier this year and a good thing, too. While we're not sure he's the 15th best-paid player on merit, it's clear that Gakpo is an elite player and one that offers what very little can.

His 18 goals in all competitions last season certainly went a long way towards that, while he was also a consistent starting figure as Liverpool won the Premier League. We'd be shocked if he ever does earn more than Haaland in his career but still, an excellent player who perhaps isn't rated as highly as he should be by many.

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