Where does 100-goal Salah rank among Liverpool’s all-time greats?

Nicholas Hughes

• Updated: 27 Sept 2021 13:11 BST
• 4 min read

When Liverpool signed Mohamed Salah from Roma in the summer of 2017, very few people could have predicted the amount of success he has had.

It only took the Egyptian one season to repay the estimated £34 million transfer fee as he broke the record for the most goals in a 38-game Premier League season, hitting the net 32 times.

Now four years on, Salah has delivered a Champions League title, the club’s first Premier League crown and has this week become the fastest player in Liverpool’s history to score 100 top flight goals with his strike against Brentford.

Jurgen Klopp has developed the 29-year-old into a superstar that has ripped up the record books, but much of the conversation still surrounds his contract situation, with his current deal set to expire in 2023 and no imminent agreement in place for an extension.

After a summer of tying down star players to bumper contract extensions, the next priority for Liverpool has to be putting an offer on the table for Salah, and giving him what he deserves to recognise the levels he consistently meets each week.

Salah’s agent, Ramy Abbas Issa, has been vocal on social media for some time about Salah’s contract extension, with his latest subliminal message to the Reds coming under a question about his client’s standing among Liverpool legends.

A post on Twitter from Optus Sport compared Salah to the likes of Steven Gerrard, Fernando Torres, Luis Suarez and Robbie Fowler and asked whether the Egyptian had surpassed those legends in the Anfield honour roll. The agent’s answer was simple, yet defiant – “yep”.

Being part of what is so far Liverpool’s only Premier League-winning squad, Salah’s status as a Liverpool legend is already solidified, alongside his heroics in the 2019 Champions League final, but there still remains conjecture around his standing in the game as a whole.

As well as being the quickest to 100 goals for Liverpool, Salah is the fifth-quickest to reach the century in Premier League history and the names ahead of him are some of the very best – Alan Shearer, Harry Kane, Sergio Aguero and Thierry Henry.

If Salah does extend his contract at Liverpool and has another four or five seasons, there is a serious case that he could not only solidify himself as the club’s best-ever player, but also be up there with the very best the Premier League has ever seen.

Salah could become one of Liverpool and the Premier League's best

Come the time of his 34th birthday, if Salah has remained at Liverpool, he could realistically be a multi-time Premier League and Champions League winner and have reached the 200-goal mark in the English top flight, a collection of achievements that no one player has managed.

There can be no arguing Salah’s success, the numbers are there for all to see. If he can go and add more trophies to the Anfield cabinet, that will be all that he needs to cement his legacy.

Liverpool’s history is littered will all-time greats – Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush, Kevin Keegan, John Barnes, Fowler, Gerrard among others – and Salah has put his name firmly amongst the rest of them.