That huge Liverpool vs Manchester City Champions League quarter-final could be a Player of the Year decider too
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When you’re a striker in a rich vein of form, you cannot wait to get out on to the pitch.
Ninety-minute matches feel like 10-minute kickabouts and you just don’t want them to end. You’re hot, it’s a simple as that, and there are few better feelings in the world.
It’s something I’ve spoken about with Gary Lineker, Sadio Mane and even the great Pele on my TV show of late, and we’re all agreed that, as strikers, you like to bank goals up.
When you’re doing that, you’re in a mindset that you can just feel normal about your game.You don’t feel cocky or over-confident, you just feel you can go out and make your runs, get into the box, and if you do that you know you’re going to score.
There’s no pressure.
(Image: Liverpool Echo)
When you haven’t scored in three or four games, however, your thought processes change.
Suddenly it’s all about, ‘I have to score today so it doesn’t become four, five, or six games’, and you find yourself snatching at, and wasting, chances.
So, I’m sorry to disappoint fans here, but all strikers are doing when the goals are flying in is keeping their own personal wolves from the door.
There’s a certain confidence when you’re popping them in, of course, but what you are really doing is giving yourself some breathing space to just keep doing your job. That’s how Mo Salah will be feeling every time he walks on to a football field at the moment.
He was brilliant again on Saturday when he put Watford to the sword with four goals, a magnificent effort.
(Image: Getty)
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It’s quite right that more and more people are beginning to wonder if the Liverpool winger will pip Kevin De Bruyne to the individual awards when they are dished out at the end of the season.
Salah is certainly coming up fast on the rails as we approach the final furlong but, for the time being, I still have KDB ahead by a nostril — and a small one at that.
The Belgian has been spectacular from day one for Manchester City, and far and away the most consistently good player in the Premier League week in, week out this season.
But the fact Salah is playing so consistently well and creating and scoring goals in the numbers he is doing means there’s now very little to choose between them.
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If the Egyptian continues to score goals at the rate he is doing between now, at the end of the season he is going to be touching Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi numbers.
That’s no mean feat anywhere in the world, but especially in the Premier League.
What it will perhaps come down to now is next month's Champions League quarter-final between Liverpool and Manchester City — which one of them can be the difference over those two legs?
And can whoever does get through then lead his team on to lift the European Cup?
There’s no reason why either one of those two teams can’t go all the way.
And if Salah’s side do that, we could just see him pip De Bruyne at the post.