Another day, another Mo Salah masterclass.
We could and arguably should hunt around to find something else a bit more novel to write about here, but really it increasingly takes something close to wilfully contrarian attention-seeking to ignore the most obvious reason for Liverpool’s stunning season.
It’s not quite correct to suggest these are unprecedented levels for Salah, given what he’s already achieved at Liverpool. But he absolutely has never been better than he’s been this season and this was another superb individual performance on an evening when Liverpool were as a whole kind of unremarkable.
That is an enormous compliment, by the way. Salah apart, it would be hard to single out a Liverpool player who put in an outstanding individual performance. They were all good, obviously, all did what is required and expected of them. But Liverpool are now a team for whom a series of six and seven out of 10 performances augmented by Salah’s now customary nine is enough to secure a thumping victory away from home.
West Ham kept the Reds at bay for half an hour, but once Luis Diaz started the ball rolling after a slice of good fortune with the way the ball bounced back to him, Liverpool set to work.
The second goal will be the one talked about. Salah cleverly manipulated the offside rules to entirely legitimately sprint forward from an offside position to pick up the ball a few seconds later before an outrageous spin and flick sent the ball into the path of Cody Gakpo for a tap-in.
Sky’s pundits spent half-time debating whether or not he meant it. We’re cheerfully willing at this point to apply The Bergkamp Protocols here and accept it was intentional simply because of the specific player in question.
West Ham were not blameless in this equation, either. After a brief rally at 1-0 down in which Mohammed Kudus thudded a shot into the base of the post they collapsed. The decision to allow Salah the time to stand still in the penalty area, put his foot on the ball and then give Alphonse Areola the eyes before finding the bottom corner felt questionable.
It must surely be time for another two-game Julen Lopetegui ultimatum, with Man City and Fulham up next either side of an FA Cup clash with Villa.
For the second time in barely a week, Liverpool spent much of the second half of a potentially tricky trip to London coasting to a merely thumping great victory rather than the potentially record-breaking one on offer if they fancied it. As at Spurs, it was entirely understandable given the time of year and upcoming workload, but annoying nonetheless. Why only score five or six when eight or nine are so clearly on offer? Poor stuff from Arne Slot’s complacent coasters, it has to be said.
They did still score two more goals in the second half, one inevitably assisted by Salah of course who jinked this way and that before expertly teeing up Diogo Jota. That takes his absurd numbers for the Premier League season to 17 goals and 13 assists from just 18 games.
It’s the eighth game already this season in which Salah has both scored and assisted. For a clue at how genuinely ridiculous that statistic is, Bukayo Saka is the only other player in the Premier League this season to have managed eight assists all in.
Salah is now three clear of his nearest rival for both goals and assists, while Liverpool’s tally of 45 goals this season is now four more than Spurs, who don’t really count, and seven more than any proper team has managed.
With an eight-point lead over Nottingham Forest because apparently it’s 1979, Liverpool head into the new year in absurdly rude health. There is a certain cruel irony in Pep’s City going so entirely to sh*t the moment Jurgen Klopp departs but it does now appear that only a serious calamity involving Salah can possibly reopen a title race in which even Arsenal and Chelsea are now distant spectators and City barely even that to deny Slot a stunning first-season success.
