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Reds sink City in epic title statement | 01:27
Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah may be producing the greatest individual Premier League season of all-time.
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Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher declared on Sky Sports that Salah is “having a Messi and Ronaldo season”.
Salah’s former Reds teammate Daniel Sturridge said “we’re talking Ballon d’Ors now”.
When you dive into the numbers, it is clear to see why the praise is so high.
The Egyptian has chalked up 41 goals and assists so far this season.
With 11 games to go, he is only six shy of Alan Shearer’s Premier League record.
Salah is leading the golden boot race with 25 goals, six clear of Newcastle’s Alexander Isak and Manchester City’s Erling Haaland.
The 32-year-old is also the first player in a Premier League season to score 25 or more goals, and provide 15 or more assists.
His goal and assist in Liverpool’s 2-0 win at City on Sunday made him the first player in Premier League history to have 40 or more goals and assists in a season twice.
It was the 11th time Salah has scored and been a provider in a game this season, the most by a player in one of Europe’s big five leagues since Lionel Messi also did so 11 times in 2014/15.
Salah is putting the ball into the back of net or setting up a teammate to score every 58 minutes, which is better than the current record of 63 set by Manchester City star Erling Haaland in his record-breaking 36-goal 2022/23 season.
This season, Salah is the first player from a Premier League, La Liga, Ligue 1, Bundesliga or Serie A club to register 50 goals and assists in all competitions.
It is little wonder that Liverpool are 11 points clear on top of the Premier League table, finished top of the table in the Champions League’s league phase and will face Newcastle at Wembley next month in the final of the Carabao Cup.
“This is going to end up being the greatest season we’ve ever seen from an individual,” Carragher said.
“I have no doubt about that and it’s not whether he finishes above those players in terms of numbers, it’s how far – and he sets the bar so high that in the future nobody can ever get there ever again.
“We are seeing something special. We’ve known that over the last seven or eight years, but this an all-time season.”
Salah has produced his heroics among the back drop of intense speculation about his future considering he is out of contract at season’s end.
So too are fellow Liverpool stars Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold.
But the trio’s status has not proved to be a distraction for Arne Slot’s side.
Salah has seemingly dropped hints about his future throughout interviews this season, and after the City win he said that he and the other experienced players in the team “need another title”.
Saudi Arabian clubs as well as French behemoth PSG and German giants Bayern Munich have been preparing to swoop on Salah, but reports from Spanish football news outlet Fichajes in recent days suggest that Liverpool may be closing in on a new deal for their superstar.
The Reds “worked intensively to avoid his exit without a fee at the end of the season, and everything indicates that the negotiations have progressed positively,” the report said.
“The possibility of him renewing his contract with the club seemed uncertain a few months ago, but now the scenario has changed and everything points to his relationship with the English team continuing for a longer time.”
Liverpool were reportedly hesitant to meet Salah’s wage demands given his age, but his breathtaking season has supposedly altered that view.
His is currently earning £350,000 a week, and Manchester United great Gary Neville revealed earlier this year that the 32-year-old is looking for a deal of around £400,000 a week over three years — which eqautes to a total contract value of about A$125m.
No matter what happens, Salah will undeniably go down as one of Liverpool’s greatest ever players, but Carragher believes a contract extension would cement his standing among the Premier League as a whole.
“I think most people would say, when we talk about the Premier League, we probably always put Thierry Henry on top. For me, Mo Salah is definitely second and if he signs another contract, that’s going to be a fairytale finish,” Carragher said.
It is often forgotten that Salah was once a Chelsea flop.
Thirteen appearances Salah made in a blue shirt for just two goals under Jose Mourinho.
The London club even loaned him out to Italian outfits Fiorentina and Roma, where he shone with 35 goals across 81 appearances for the two club, before joining Liverpool in 2017.
“For a start people try to identify me as the coach that sold Salah. I am the coach that bought Salah. It’s completely the wrong idea,” Mourinho recalled in 2019.
“I pushed the club to buy him and at the time we already had fantastic attacking players—Hazard, Willian, we had top talent there. But I told them to buy that kid.
“He was just a lost kid in London. He was a lost kid in a new world.
“We wanted to work him, to become better and better and better. But he was more of the idea of wanting to play and not wait.
“I think that he doesn’t regret that move because everything went well. Everything went well for him and the progression went well for him but, at that moment, he was just a kid with a huge desire to play every week, every minute and we couldn’t give him it.”
The move to Anfield has been an incredibly fruitful one.
Salah is a Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and two-time League Cup champion with the Reds.
He is the club’s all-time leading goal-scorer in the Premier League with 180 goals, has won the golden boot three times as well as player of the season in his 32-goal 2017-18 campaign.
He also won the Puskas Award for his stunning strike in the Merseyside Derby that season.
Such an impressive resume drew high praise from Manchester United great Roy Keane when speaking on Sky Sports after the Reds’ win at City.
“I think if you’re going to be successful, any big club, you do need that world class player,” Keane said.
You can have brilliant players around you, but you need that one player who is almost ahead of everyone else just to get you over the line. Make the difference in tight games. Salah does that week-in, week-out.”
Liverpool fans will have an abundance of opportunities to watch Salah showcase his world class skills with seven of their remaining 11 Premier League fixtures this season to be played at Anfield.
As they waltz towards the title, Salah may continue to set records along the way.
There remains a lot to play out with his contract and individual accolades, it will be fascinating to witness whether he remains a Red next season, and how he fares in the Ballon d’Or voting in October.
