If you’re going to win it in February, win it in February right. On a rain-sodden day in Manchester, the kind of afternoon when the wind chases you around, lifting up the hem of your coat and firing a draught of ice-cold water up your spine, Liverpool didn’t so much overwhelm Manchester City as stroll politely past, all controlled aggression and strength in reserve.
A 2-0 scoreline seemed fair enough by the end. But then, by half-time this already felt like a victory lap. Albeit, an apposite one. If this really is to be the moment Liverpool took a decisive lead down the back straight, it happened in a way that reflects perfectly the calm, still centre of their season, both goals arriving in a 23-minute spell when Mohamed Salah decided it was time to bend the day to his will.
Related: Liverpool extend lead at top to 11 points with statement win at Manchester City
From August to the fag end of winter, Salah has played with a kind of light around him this season. Perhaps in time this will come to be seen as his imperial phase, a perfectly ripe footballer in a team perfectly set up to feed his cutting edge. He didn’t do much here in the opening 35 minutes. At which point he did three startlingly high‑grade things.
The first was scoring Liverpool’s opening goal. A low corner form the right was pea-rolled into the centre and funnelled on by a fine touch from Dominik Szoboszlai to Salah unmarked by the penalty spot. The first-time shot was hard, low and deflected past Ederson.
The second moment of High Salah was both breathtaking and the genesis of Liverpool’s second goal. Again he took the ball in the left channel as City’s players just seemed to melt away, drowning in aura, not wanting to look directly at this thing. From there Salah produced the most delightful stunned reverse no-look nudge into the run of Trent Alexander-Arnold, one of those moments where you get a sense of a footballer operating with his footballing third eye wide open, just rearranging the other parts around him.
It came to nothing, but moments later Salah set up the second goal. Again he was given a kind of presidential motorcade escort down the City left, before passing inside for Szoboszlai to roll a shot into the corner. As the ball hit the net Salah was already clenching his fists like a man about to set fire to his air guitar, the look of a footballer who knows this game is done.
You can sometimes get a little too used to extraordinary things happening. The goal and the assist here made it 25 and 16 in the league, and nine in his last eight games in all competitions as the season narrows to a point.
Just as striking, all of this has been enacted with that weirdly carefree air of ruthlessness, the certainty of the player who takes penalties like he’s trying to destroy something behind the goal (no visualisation, no breathing exercises here) and just seems to be having the time of his life out in the middle of all that noise and heat.
It is still slightly baffling that Kylian Mbappé or Vinícius Júnior are talked up so often as the best attacking footballers in the world. Mbappé in particular has an impressively powerful multi‑platform celebrity machine at his back. But Salah has been top gun, the best attacking player in the world this season; and arguably the most decisive presence in any elite European team for much of the past five years.
Not that those higher registers were needed here. On a day when the task for City was simply to look like a functioning entity, Pep Guardiola picked an end‑of‑term kind of team, all fun attacking angles.
Related: Liverpool in ‘good position’ after win at Manchester City, says Arne Slot
Arne Slot’s Liverpool team was also notable. Once again every player was inherited from his predecessor. At least five of them are now playing in slightly altered roles. And Liverpool’s manager deserves his slice of credit for Salah’s extraordinary bloom. Slot may have the air of a friendly neighbourhood greengrocer who juggles apples on his forearm, but he has also been sharp and confident enough to fix only the parts that need fixing. Salah has been asked to deliver more of the same, but also freed up by Liverpool’s increased patience on the ball to become more of an actively creative influence.
Salah-dependence is clearly a thing. How could it not be? He has either made or scored more than half of Liverpool’s goals this season. And Salah has also carried Slot, has imbued every managerial call with an air of righteousness. You don’t need to possess a fearless dead-eye super-ripped genius-level finisher to build a reputation as a brilliant manager. But it does kind of help.
Liverpool will surely go on to win the league from here. And if it seems a little ominous still that the best attacking player in Europe is yet to sign a new contract, this is perhaps just a time to live for the present, to drink in that age of imperial Salah.
