Liverpool settle £5m bill for Swans' Rodgers

'I like everything in him,' Mourinho once said of Rodgers (pictured). 'He is ambitious and does not see football very differently from myself.' (Getty Images)

Liverpool have demonstrated the value they attach to securing Brendan Rodgers' services by settling his £5m in compensation in full with Swansea City, ahead of his anticipated presentation at Anfield today as the new manager of the club.

The total compensation payable to Swansea may be more than £5.5m, including the sums being paid to enable Rodgers to bring three of his back-room staff, first-team coach Colin Pascoe, match analyst Chris Davies and conditioning expert Glen Driscoll, with him to Merseyside.

The sum is a significant one, considering that Liverpool already face a testing time complying with Uefa's Financial Fair Play regime. New projections from the financialfairplay.co.uk website suggest the club may sustain an aggregate loss of around £42.7m for the first monitoring period of FFP – with the permitted loss being £36m. The projections illustrate how Rodgers may have to operate within restrictions at his new club.

The new figures assume the club will not make a profit on player sales next season and, to meet FFP tests, it is estimated that new purchases will need to be funded largely by player sales above their current book value. That would mean a substantial summer of selling if the estimated £30m to be put at Rodgers' disposal is actually to materialise.

The club's owner, Fenway Sports Group, has been an ardent advocate of FFP, which it sees as a way of levelling the playing field for clubs.

Liverpool's position in relation to FFP was not enhanced by the former director of football Damien Comolli, left, giving a number of new contracts to players who had been on pre-June 2010 deals. Salaries paid out in contracts signed before June 2010 can be excluded from the club's outgoings for FFP purposes, though the new deals mean the club can exclude only £16.9m in this way. Manchester City can exclude around £53m in wages for long-standing players from their cost base for FFP purposes.

Pascoe's arrival appears to remove the possibility of Steve Clarke, assistant to Kenny Dalglish, remaining at Anfield, despite Fenway having rejected his resignation.

Louis van Gaal's prospects of joining Liverpool are also extinguished, though Rodgers will be asked to work with a new tier of management, including an administrator and a chief scout, who will collectively replace Comolli.