Saturday turned into a very good day for manager Jurgen Klopp and Liverpool as not only did they continue their recent good form by taking a 2-1 victory over Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park, they put themselves top of the Premier League table.
It could have been short lived with Arsenal facing Aston Villa, but Unai Emery’s side backed up their dominant win over Manchester City with their gaffer taking revenge at his former club, and it left the Anfield faithful with a one point advantage at the end of the weekend.
It was not the only talking point to come out of the game, as Liverpool had to fight back from a one goal deficit and with late goals from Egyptian wizard Mohamed Salah and a stoppage time winner from Harvey Elliott, there was joy on Merseyside once again.
31 year old Salah’s goal is the most important headline to take though, it was his 200th for the club since he arrived from AS Roma back in the summer of 2017, and given they only paid a reported £34 million for him at the time – with hindsight, given his return and importance to them, it has proven to be an absolute snip of a fee given some of the transfers that we see go through in the modern game that simply do not work out.
As wider football Stattos’ and Liverpool fans will know, Salah now becomes only the fifth player to hit those goalscoring numbers for the club and he follows in some illustrious footsteps. Namely, club legends, Ian Rush, Roget Hunt, Gordon Hodgson and Billy Liddell, and he did it in a much needed 76th minute boost to the side who were losing at the point.
Some will cite Palace were down to ten men, but it was only 98 seconds before Salah took advantage and registered their first shot on target – that was how poor they were and how important his moment was to them.
With 200 goals in 327 appearances for the club, across all competitions, not least laying on 86 assists, his importance to them in the second half of the season in such a tight title race is obvious to everyone – and it also stands as testament as to why Liverpool were prepared to push the boat out to secure his contract for longer when it looked like he might want a new challenge previously.
As he hit his 150th Premier League goal, Salah spoke about the similarities he saw with the victorious 2019/20 squad.
“I see the mentality to keep fighting until the end. We keep doing that. We have a new team now because there’s six or seven new players. We need to give them advice. They’re learning a lot and they’re really nice. We can do something special this year.”
The next few months will tell if they can, but right now a number of other sides would fancy their own chances.