Salah targets Premier League glory in ‘last year’ at Liverpool

Mohamed Salah says he is motivated to do “something special” in what he believes will be his last year at Liverpool. The 32-year-old, whose contract expires at the end of the season, has been in scintillating form, propelling Arne Slot’s team into a commanding six-point lead at the top of the Premier League.
The Egypt forward has scored 17 goals and provided 13 assists in 18 Premier League games this season ahead of the visit of struggling Manchester United tomorrow. Reports have suggested Salah is nearing an agreement with Liverpool but he said a deal was still “far away” after last weekend’s 5-0 win at West Ham.
Salah was part of the side that ended Liverpool’s 30-year wait to win a league title in 2020, but celebrations were muted as the players lifted the trophy at an empty Anfield during the coronavirus pandemic. “It’s my last year in the club so you want to do something special for the city,” Salah told Sky Sports in an interview. “We waited for that title for 30 years or so. So, to win it and it was the pandemic at that time, we didn’t really have time to celebrate it in the right way. It’s not a nice thing to do, so hopefully we can do it this year.”
Salah is not the only high-profile Liverpool star out of contract at the end of the season. Captain Virgil van Dijk and England right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold are also now free to discuss terms with foreign clubs for next season. Together they have helped restore Liverpool to the top of English and European football.
Under previous manager Jurgen Klopp, they won a clean sweep of trophies, including the Champions League, Club World Cup, FA Cup and League Cup. But the League Cup is the only one they have won more than once and Salah believes his generation of players need a second Premier League title to cement their legacy.
“My motivation this year was to win a trophy and be a big part of winning that trophy, especially the Premier League,” he said. “I still believe the team needs a trophy. There is still half of the team left like me, Trent, Virgil, Alisson (Becker), Robbo (Andy Robertson). It’s necessary for us to win another trophy before we all go.”
Liverpool coach Arne Slot was asked whether he could categorically state that Liverpool would not let Alexander-Arnold leave in the January transfer window, with the defender heavily linked with a move to Real Madrid.
Slot said Alexander-Arnold was “fully committed” to Liverpool and would be playing tomorrow. “Hopefully he brings the same performances as he brought in for the last half-year, because I think everybody saw how great a first half of the season he had, how much he is here, how much he wants to win here,” said Slot.”
Man United ‘much better’ than league table shows: Slot
Meanwhile, Slot says crisis-hit Manchester United are “much, much better” than their shocking position in the Premier League suggests as he prepares his Liverpool team for a clash against their fierce rivals. Liverpool are six points clear at the top of the Premier League table - and are hot favourites to land a 20th English top-flight crown, which would pull them level with record-holders United.
United, by contrast, are 14th in the table after five defeats in their past six league games under new manager Ruben Amorim. But Slot, also in his first campaign in England, is adamant he will not take his opponents lightly at Anfield, when asked if he might rest players at pre-match press conference.
“No, of course I’m not going to plan to rest any player because it’s a big game and I think it’s for me I said it before the first fixture (a 3-0 win at Old Trafford) and I can say it one more time, that they have much better players in my opinion than maybe the league table shows at the moment. I think it’s going to take a while maybe for Ruben Amorim to bring this out of the players...but they will definitely go up and they are much, much, much better than the league table shows at the moment.”
The Dutchman said he had sympathy with his rival in the Old Trafford hot seat, who joined United from Portuguese champions Sporting Lisbon in November. “I think every manager sympathises with every other manager, because we all know how much pressure this job brings,” said Slot. “That’s not different for him than for me, or for any other manager that works in the Premier League, or somewhere else around the world.”