For decades, Liverpool offensive players and penalty box prowess measured on a scale of ‘one’ to ‘Robbie Fowler‘.
The iconic Toxteth Terror, later rechristened God in the stands and on the training ground, was the fastest player to hit 100 goals for Liverpool and provided moments of magic as they pulled back through a difficult time for the club. The best sides of the country in the 1990s. He’s largely been heralded as the best finisher ever seen in L4 in the current era, although newer players may come to their bows with perhaps other strings.
Fowler eventually scored 183 goals for the Reds, becoming the sixth all-time top scorer in 369 games, with no player scoring more than 128 hits. Premier League.
until sunday, when Manchester United punched at AnfieldAnd Mohammed Salah displaced him with two of the team’s seven goals.
The Egyptian currently has 129 in best flight in just 205 league games – 61 fewer than Fowler’s match tally – and Kop now has a real contender to replace his old local heroes as the modern era’s greatest Anfield shooter.
Doubling the league score with a double goal in Chelsea on 13/14, Salah expanded the nets and passed names like Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Robbie Keane, Nicolas Anelka, Dwight Yorke and others. Romelu Lukaku this season. All high-profile predatory talents in their own right, many have played in the Premier League far longer than Salah has ever played.
The company that he surrounds himself with, which has been among the top 15 top scorers in the league since its inception, emphasizes how consistently he annoys rival goalkeepers. Since joining Liverpool from Rome in 2017. Jamie Vardy is next, and it’s definitely possible to be in the top 10 of all time next season.
Accurately measuring questions about where exactly Salah ranks among Premier League legends is difficult given the subjective nature of such rankings and the inherently tribal nature of fans who will almost always prefer someone playing for their own club over someone playing for another club. .
Of course, they’re a little different from most of the all-time top scorers in that they’re strikers; The top 20 non-traditional number 9s are Frank Lampard, attacking midfielder who has nines, tens, and midfielders at different stages, and Wayne Rooney, now predominantly right-wing Salah.
However Add Salah’s league titleOne of three players to win (or co-win) the Golden Boots, his assist rate, his versatile influence on the team around him, and his incredible consistency over the past six seasons and on the rise, and he’s definitely in conversation as one of the best forwards the modern era has seen in top flight.
The question for Liverpool and club fans is whether the odds of surpassing Fowler’s league record, winning a title Scouser didn’t win, and surpassing the total hits of the same player very soon, alone are at their peak. , more. It’s just five behind as it plays around 4,000 fewer minutes.
Salah’s number of goals alone is not the whole story, but each adds weight to the argument that he outstripped the others.
Volume, consistency, quality and importance – the current Number 11 can point to every one of its corners.
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For example, the teams he scored most frequently against are Manchester United and Manchester City.
He currently has a dozen games, including ten in the league, against the Red Devils. No one has scored more goals for Liverpool against their biggest rivals, United. Non-stop.
Salah also has 10 more against City – the biggest obstacle to Liverpool winning even more trophies in recent seasons.
Three players from the past, Gordon Hodgson, Kenny Dalglish and Ian Rush, have more than him, but face City in a quite different era: Kevin Bond instead of Kevin de Bruyne, David White instead of David Silva.
This bravery in front of the fort at the greatest events has endeared Salah to his loyal host many times over; He already had a hit rate to rival other Anfield heroes, but his longevity allowed him to shoot far longer than any Fernando Torres or Luis Suarez could.
They left with 81 and 82 points respectively; Salah has almost the same goals-per-game rate as the latter, but more than double the number of strokes.
He is arguably the greatest striker Liverpool have signed in the Premier League era, talented and hardworking, technically talented and tactically sound, adding the silver teams he and his fans have longed for in a time where others have fallen short.
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As for whether he’s outlived Fowler now, in reality, controversy has already piled up in his favour.
Fowler had the intangibles that no new signing could match: local affinity and bond, the feeling of his return, an almost lifelong bond with the club once he emerged through the ranks. In the eyes of some, it will never be displaced for these reasons.
But Salah’s own off-pitch and off-game efforts are different in content, but not less in weight – that has changed in the intervening decades as the world has changed: from supporting dockers to promoting women’s rights, for example.
Salah wanted to be Liverpool’s all-time top scorer in the Premier League, and he admitted it was in front of his eyes from his first season at Merseyside.
He will continue to rise on the goal scorer-only list in all competitions, given that he will stay longer after his contract was renewed last year. Next up is Fowler, just five goals ahead, another club legend three goals behind, Steven Gerrard.
Salah will outnumber both. Perhaps he has already done so in highly subjective terms.