Former Liverpool defender has been critical of the Egyptian in the past but says the current Footballer of the Year is guaranteed to go down as a true Premier League great
Mohamed Salah of Liverpool claps
Mo Salah tops the goal-involvement charts against Manchester City(Image: Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
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After 1,000 matches as a manager of a professional football team, there will probably be plenty of opposition players Pep Guardiola would like to see the back of. Guardiola will reach that four-figure milestone when he walks out at the Etihad Stadium late on Sunday afternoon for another instalment of Manchester City’s rivalry with Liverpool.
And it is a rivalry that has consistently presented Pep with a particular problem … how to stop Mohamed Salah. Quite simply, Salah has been involved in more Premier League goals against Guardiola’s City than any other player, scoring nine and assisting six.
Across all competitions against City, Salah has scored 13 and made eight assists. The only teams Salah has been as productive against are Spurs (16 goals and five assists) and Manchester United (16 goals and six assists).
And those sort of figures, amongst many things, are what put Salah into football’s hall of fame. That is certainly what Jamie Carragher thinks.
“Sometimes, when you look at goalscorers - and it is the toughest job to do - a lot of them maybe don’t score against the biggest teams or the best defenders, whereas Mo Salah does,” declares Carragher. “And that is something he should be given extra credit for.
"He delivers in the biggest games. When you think of great strikers, the best goalscorer Liverpool have ever had is Ian Rush and, famously, he went years without scoring against Manchester United.”
Mo Salah with Ian Rush
Ian Rush is only one of two players to have scored more Liverpool goals than Mo Salah - the other is Roger Hunt
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Quirkily, Rush did indeed have a poor record against United, scoring only three times in 34 games against them. But Rush is commonly acknowledged as Liverpool’s greatest striker, not least for the fact he tops the club’s all-time scoring charts with 346 goals, 61 ahead of Roger Hunt’s total and 96 ahead of Salah’s tally.
He explains: “The debate about who is the greatest Liverpool goalscorer will rage but if you asked Salah about that, I know what his first answer would be … I play on the wing and they played through the middle! And to be fair, there is definitely something in that.”
Jamie Carragher in a promotional T-shirt
Jamie Carragher has helped launch a new Every Minute Matters initiative which hopes to make sure everyone in grassroots football can use a defibrillator
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In fact, Carragher - who criticised 33-year-old Salah during last season’s contract stand-off and received a feisty response from the Footballer of the Year - actually thinks the Egyptian, in the grand scheme of things, might be slightly under-rated. Carragher says: “When Salah is not at his best, it feels like he gets a bit more criticism than I have seen other players - other great players - get when they are not at their best.
“Maybe that is down to the way he plays, as well. He is a real numbers man. When you judge Salah, it always feels like it is about goals, it is about assists, it is all about the data-driven game of today.
“It’s as if he doesn’t score or doesn’t assist, what is his influence on the game? I can see both sides of that.
Mohamed Salah of Liverpool controls the ball, as Pep Guardiola, Manager of Manchester City, react during the Premier League match between Manchester City FC and Liverpool FC at Etihad Stadium on February 23, 2025 in Manchester, England
Pep Guardiola will be glad to see the back of Mo Salah when their paths eventually stop crossing
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"He’s not like a Thierry Henry or an Eden Hazard when maybe if they didn’t score in a game, there would be lots of parts of their game you would look at and admire. With Salah, his mentality is for the goal. All the time.”
Carragher was one of the pundits who highlighted his early-season struggles but there is no bigger fan of Salah’s contribution to English club football. He says: “In certain games, it is not the end of the world if Salah is not playing but he is always in Liverpool’s best team.
“He is one of the best professionals in the game, he will play for years to come - whether in a red shirt or not - and he is one of the greatest players we have ever seen in the Premier League. Simple as that.”
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