Mohamed Salah Liverpool exit: Is the Egyptian King the greatest to ever pull on the red shirt?
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His individual honours are too plentiful to list, but include three PFA Players' Player of the Year awards and another three from the Football Writers' Awards.Salah's remarkable consistent high levels have formed the backbone of his success with the Reds, but where does he rank amongst Liverpool's all-time greats? To vast amount of Liverpool supporters Kenny Dalglish will always be the greatest player to pull on the red shirt and I'm not going to disagree with them.Those of us born a little later thought no-one would ever get close to Steven Gerrard when it comes to greatest Red seen with our own eyes, and the fact that Mohamed Salah has muscled his way in enough to even make this a conversation tells you everything you need to know about the man's Anfield career.He might well have done more than that though.So much of Gerrard's Anfield achievements were produced when swimming against the tide.
The Egyptian is a double Premier League and one-time Champions League winner, but at least one more success could and should have been added to either of those columns.But for me what he has won, and the way he embraced his status as an ambassador both for Egypt and Liverpool on the global stage, make him the greatest I have ever seen play for the club.What Gerrard did made it all possible for him sure, but what Salah achieved propelled Liverpool forward to heights, and regular trophies, supporters had dreamed of seeing lifted, and that marks him out as the No.1.Richard GarnettMohamed Salah's transition from pacy winger to global superstar is something that should be studied. That he has chosen to call time on his Liverpool career now tells you that he knows his levels have now started to wain at the age of 33.
I don't have an issue with that but I've been around for longer than I care to admit, and whilst he walks into my all-time starting XI, it's difficult for me to say that he is the club's greatest ever player.Despite his quite remarkable achievements, I actually believe that there have been plenty of players that are more skilful than Salah over the years, but that alone doesn't make you an all-time great. That's why the likes of Steven Gerrard, Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush and Graeme Souness will always be in this conversation, even if the latter two did have spells in Italy.Nevertheless, Salah is surely, on balance, the club's greatest player since Gerrard and I have no doubt that will be reflected in the reception he receives when he bids farewell at the end of the season.