Jurgen Klopp is adamant Mohamed Salah will not be affected by the arrival of Erling Haaland and Darwin Nunez in his quest for the Premier League Golden Boot.
The Liverpool boss praised his talisman forward’s commitment to the club, adding that he believes Salah could score a staggering 34 or 35 goals this season.
Salah has dominated the charts in recent years and with the arrival of Nunez and Haaland he could now be part of a five-horse race including Harry Kane and Tottenham’s son Heung-Min, with whom he shared the honors last season .
Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp has backed Mohamed Salah not to be distracted by new Premier League boys Erling Haaland and Darwin Nunez in the Golden Boot race
Salah shared the Golden Boot with Son Heung-Min last season, winning three of the last five
Klopp said: “I don’t think he thinks too much about other players or how often they score. Maybe he’ll do it in May when he’ll hopefully be 34 or 35 and the other two 32. I’ll only see that then.
“New strikers are coming. In Germany when Robert Lewandowski left [the questions were]: “Who will be the new goalscorer?” They discussed that.
“I don’t know, people are motivated by different things. I think Mo’s biggest motivation is winning football games and scoring goals, that’s definitely the case.”
The Germany manager was just as enthusiastic about Salah’s commitment to Liverpool after the 30-year-old was linked with an Anfield departure.
Salah was due to enter the final year of his contract this year and could have potentially left Anfield on a free deal before penning a new long-term deal that would keep him at the club until at least 2025.
However, Klopp believes any contract uncertainty would have had no effect on Salah’s performance and would only have worried the media.
He said: “Mo would have been the same person, I’m 100 per cent sure he could have brushed that aside but you wouldn’t stop asking and that’s the problem we face all the time.
“It helps a lot better to know as much as you can about the season after a year, but that’s not as relevant in the year itself.
“I was working with players there and one day I didn’t see and I as a player would be more affected by this fact of not knowing where I will be next year than these players.
“It was Gini [Georginio Wijnaldum]Emre Can, it was Lewandowski at Borussia Dortmund, these guys are real professionals, but we live in a world where everything counts and you always have questions.
Nunez has already impressed Liverpool fans with his performance in the Community Shield, a game in which Haaland struggled to score
