Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp believes that Mohamed Salah will go down as one of the best strikers that football fans have witnessed following his brace in Sunday's 2-1 Premier League win over Tottenham Hotspur.
The 30-year-old has not been able to hit his usual goalscoring heights in the early stages of the 2022-23 top-flight campaign but was back to his clinical best at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Salah broke the deadlock in the 11th minute of the contest after receiving the ball from Darwin Nunez and then capitalised on Eric Dier's poor header to double the Reds' lead after 40 minutes.
Harry Kane pulled one back for Spurs with 20 minutes to go, but Klopp's side held on for a vital three points which ended their two-game losing run in the division.
Salah now has six goals from 13 Premier League games this term to go alongside his seven Champions League goals, and Klopp has affirmed that the Egypt international will boast "absolutely insane" numbers come the end of his career.
"Even with a 'slow start', he was involved in most chances in Europe, in football, but we didn't take them or he didn't take them," Klopp said of Salah in his post-game press conference.
"That can happen for a striker, it's a completely normal phase, but how everybody knows, he will in the end when you look back on his career in four, five or six years, everybody will remember one of the best strikers you ever saw because the numbers will be absolutely insane.
"Tonight, what pleased me the most, he scored the two goals and then he played like a real, real team player. I am not surprised by it, but it is just important because he gets confronted with these questions as well, 'slow start' and these kind of things, and then it's like you have to score a hat-trick here or whatever. So, [I am] really pleased for him, top performance and showed an outstanding attitude tonight."
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Liverpool were under huge pressure to bounce back from recent defeats to Leeds United and Nottingham Forest in North London, and that win marked their 10th game in a row without defeat versus Tottenham.
The Reds have now moved up to eighth place in the table - seven points adrift of fourth-placed Tottenham with a game in hand - and Klopp admitted that he got carried away with his celebrations at full time.
"Yeah. It was not my plan actually, I didn't want to do it but I got carried away and I thought the people deserved a little bit [after] tough times, they had now to travel a lot in the Premier League until they saw the first three points," the German added.
"So yeah, I got a bit carried away but it was big, absolutely big. Before that final whistle I would not have been able to do that because I was really knackered, it was tough, a really tough game for everybody.
"There was a couple of moments when it was counter, counter, counter pretty much. If you can score the third it obviously changes the whole game but we couldn't. Then Tottenham scores their goal, which was really well played, and we had to keep fighting.
"We did that and I liked that and people who follow us a little bit longer know in our best spells, if you want to win an away game this is completely the normal way to do it and I am really happy about it tonight."
Liverpool will now turn their attention to Wednesday's EFL Cup third-round clash with Derby County before facing Southampton on Saturday ahead the World Cup break.
Ben Knapton
