Liverpool star Mohamed Salah has scored 10 goals in the English Premier League this season and three of them came in the 5-0 win over Manchester United at Old Trafford last weekend.
Salah – who has now scored in a club record 10 consecutive games in all competitions – also became the first opposition player to score a hat trick at Old Trafford since Real Madrid’s Brazilian Ronaldo in the UEFA Champions League back in 2003 and the first player to do so in the English top flight in the Premier League era.
Salah was delighted after the record-breaking performance at Old Trafford.
“I think it is great to win 5-0 here, we knew before the game it would be tough if we did not play our game,” he told Sky Sports after walking away with the matchball.
“We knew they will come and try to give everything so we had to give 100 percent.
“We just tried to play our football and play in between the lines to create more chances. We did that and were lucky to score.
“As long as the team keep winning I am happy and to give my best to the team to win. The first goal I gave to Naby Keita to score.
“We know what it takes to win the Premier League, we did it two years ago. A big win here but still only three points.
“We try to win each game and try to win the title. We need to play to win everything.
“From our heads from preseason, we need to win the Premier League and hopefully we go for that.
“After halftime we were talking in the dressing room to just keep going and score as many as we could.”
He appears to be taking that attitude into every game.
Salah – who was recently immortalized with a waxwork model at Madame Tussauds in London – has been in imperious form and it has also seen him become the top-scoring African footballer in the English Premier League, overtaking the former Chelsea and Cote d’Ivoire star striker Didier Drogba at the top of the list.
Two of Salah’s 107 strikes were for Chelsea back when he played for the Stamford Bridge outfit before building his career at Fiorentina and Roma in Italy’s Serie A but the other 105 have come in 154 games for Liverpool. In total he has 107 goals and 43 assists in 167 games in England’s Premier League.
There is little reason to believe that the “Egyptian King” will relinquish his crown as Africa’s top scorer in the English Premier League but who else is on the list?
Didier Drogba
Salah and the great Ivorian were tied on 104 goals before Liverpool’s five-star performance away to Manchester United last weekend. Now Drogba is in the rearview mirror.
Drogba was a dominant force for Chelsea after signing from Marseille, going on to become the first African player to hit a century of English Premier League goals.
In the end he played 254 games in the league for the Blues where he also won a number of trophies, including four Premier League titles. The four-time African Player of the Year also won the golden boot twice in the English top flight.
Sadio Mane
The third African player to reach a century of English Premier League goals is another of Liverpool’s fearsome attacking trident, whom assistant coach Pep Lijnders likened to dinosaurs in Jurassic Park after the feeding frenzy at Old Trafford.
“Our front players constantly get into good positions to score and then the quality of our front three, we said they looked like velociraptors in Jurassic Park and they go for it,” Lijnders said.
Mane has 100 goals in the English Premier League during his time at Southampton and Liverpool. The first 25 of them came in 74 games for Saints after arriving from Red Bull Salzburg in 2014 and he has gone from strength to strength at Anfield.
The 29-year-old has scored his century in 237 appearances in the English Premier League – which he helped Liverpool to win in 2019, as well as winning a UEFA Champions League with the Reds – and of all the players with the capability of surpassing Salah it is his Liverpool teammate.
Emmanuel Adebayor
Togolese striker Adebayor has played for several English Premier League sides including Arsenal, Spurs and Manchester City, scoring 97 goals along the way.
It all started at Arsenal, the club he joined in 2006 and it ended at Crystal Palace, with a stint at Real Madrid along the way.
Yakubu Ayegbeni
The much-traveled Nigerian scored 95 goals in the English Premier League with Portsmouth, Middlesbrough, Everton and Blackburn Rovers. While he may have never been close to a winner’s medal he did come close to a century of goals across 252 appearances.
Riyad Mahrez
Like Salah and Sane, Mahrez is a winger but he has also proved himself to be an elite goalscorer having netted 68 times in the English Premier League since arriving in 2014.
Mahrez signed for Leicester City from French Ligue 2 side Le Havre and he was a key part of their title winning side when they upset the old guard to lift the English Premier League under Claudio Ranieri in 2016, where he hit 17 goals and won the PFA Player of the Year award.
The Algerian moved on to Manchester City and he has impressed since he started playing under Pep Guardiola since 2018 after joining Manchester City, winning two more league titles along the way.
He is arguably in his finest form right now having been involved in a number of goals for club and country this season.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
The Gabonese striker is level with Mahrez on 68 goals and he has shown his ability in front of goal during his time in the English Premier League. Aubameyang scored 22 goals in his first full season with Arsenal in 2018-19, joint-topping the golden boot charts, and the Gunners skipper has been a bright spot during dark days at the Emirates.
