Mohamed Salah has reached 30 Premier League goal involvements in just 18 games this season, quicker than anyone else ever. His 2024-25 could become one of the most memorable individual seasons of all time.
With every spellbinding performance, which are coming at a remarkable rate, Mohamed Salah strengthens his hand. Somehow, Liverpool find themselves in a position where their most important player is about to enter the final six months of his contract, and the same individual is the best player in the world on current form.
Salah may not have been in serious contention for the end-of-year accolades, but as our tired 2024 calendars prepare to be dislodged by glossy 2025 replacements, it’s difficult to think of anyone who’s come close to his level over the first half of 2024-25.
The Egypt star just seems to be getting better and better. At the age of 32, perhaps Liverpool could be forgiven for expecting him to be past his best by now, which would go some way to explaining how they face the prospect of losing him on a free transfer in six months’ time.
But to anyone who’s watched Salah play this season, the notion that he might be on the decline would just seem ridiculous, as he closed out 2024 with more goal involvements in all competitions (52) than anyone else from the top five leagues across the full year.
This is also about much more than just the framing of his brilliant form at a time when he happens to be in contract negotiations with Liverpool. No, the fact is, we are witnessing greatness before our eyes, with Salah on a trajectory that would leave all prior Premier League players in his wake.
Sunday’s 5-0 romp at West Ham was yet another fruitful occasion for Salah, for whom nearly everything he touches turns to gold at the moment.
Having squandered a glorious chance (we did say nearly everything…), Salah was the inspiration for Liverpool making it 2-0 at the London Stadium just before half-time, his deceptive first touch in the box helping him evade Konstantinos Mavropanos before prodding the ball to Cody Gakpo for an easy finish.
Four minutes later, Salah’s disguised shot found the bottom-right corner to make it 3-0, and then his brilliant solo run from inside his own half to the edge of the West Ham box saw him tee up Diogo Jota to make it 5-0 late on. He carried the ball 43.4 metres before passing, making it the seventh-longest assist-ending carry in the English top flight this term.
They were three very different contributions and yet simultaneously all very Salah, showing his ludicrous range as a footballer.
So, Salah ended the game with another hat-trick of goal involvements – even if he’d not added that second assist late on for good measure, he’d have still scored and assisted in a Premier League game for the eighth time this season, which is a new Premier League record for a single campaign.
Breaking such a record at any point of a season is an impressive feat, but we have to remember Liverpool haven’t even reached the midway point of 2024-25, having played 18 times. Were he to carry on at this rate for the rest of the season, he’d score and assist in 16 matches, more than twice as often as any other player in Premier League history has managed in one campaign.
Okay, we’ll pump the brakes somewhat for a moment. Yes, before any party poopers start trying to slow down the hype, we do realise that Salah maintaining this level for a full season is unlikely. But why shouldn’t we question the limits of what’s possible?
For instance, Salah’s latest three goal involvements took him to 30 for the season in the Premier League – that’s 17 goals and 13 assists. It’s already two more than his total for 2023-24 from 14 fewer matches.
It’s a rate of impact that we’ve just never seen before in the Premier League, with Salah reaching 30 goal involvements quicker than any other player in the competition’s history.
On a similar note, Salah is averaging 1.7 goal involvements per 90 minutes in the top flight this term (1,586 mins played); among players to have managed at least eight goal involvements in a single season, no one has matched the Liverpool forward’s current frequency.
The previous best rate was Gabriel Jesus in 2016-17 after he arrived at Manchester City in January 2017. He recorded 1.5 goal involvements per 90 minutes, though his 650 minutes played reflects how it wasn’t form that was maintained over a long stretch of time with little opportunity for rest, as is the case for Salah.
When the parameters are altered to only look at players who’ve played at least 1,000 minutes in a season, the list looks a little closer to what you might expect; Erling Haaland’s record of 1.4 goal involvements per 90 in 2022-23 is the previous best. That’ll not surprise many, given the record-breaking nature of his first campaign in England.
Although Salah has scored more than anyone else in the Premier League this term (17), his rate of 0.96 goals per 90 minutes is some way behind Haaland’s rate of 1.17 per 90 from 2022-23 – but of course, with Salah in 2024-25, it’s all about the dual threat of finishing and creativity that he provides rather than his game being heavily weighted one way or the other.
So, while that difference of 0.3 per 90 between Salah’s output this season and Haaland’s in 2022-23 might not look like much in simple terms, it’s obviously pretty hefty when extrapolated over a full season.
The graphic below shows the paths of the players who’ve managed the most goal involvements in single Premier League seasons. Andrew Cole and Alan Shearer lead the way with their respective hauls of 47 in 1993-94 and 1994-95, though we have to remember that both of those came in 42-game seasons.
Now, the next graphic shows where Salah would end up were he to continue averaging 1.7 goal involvements per 90 until the end of the season…
It shows that, at his current rate, Salah is on track to reach 63 Premier League goal involvements in 2024-25. That would be 16 more than anyone else has ever managed, and 19 more than anyone else in a 38-game season.
Salah’s rate of assists is arguably what’s providing the biggest boost to his overall goal involvements frequency because he’s setting up goals at a rate rarely managed by anyone before.
With 0.74 assists per 90, Salah ranks second for assists rate in a single season among players to have played at least 1,000 minutes – Cesc Fàbregas leads the way here, but he only featured for 1,327 mins in the 2016-17 season.
The comparisons that would probably be most constructive would be to look at Kevin De Bruyne in 2019-20 and Thierry Henry in 2002-03. In 2002-03, Henry set the record for most assists in a Premier League season, totalling 20 – 17 years later, De Bruyne repeated the feat but couldn’t reach 21.
De Bruyne’s 20 assists came at an average of 0.64 per 90, whereas Henry recorded them at a frequency of 0.55 per 90, meaning Salah is on track to obliterate the record for most assists in a season.
Henry’s 2002-03 campaign retains a special place in the Premier League history books because it’s the only instance in which a player has managed at least 20 goals and 20 assists in a single season (G24, A20).
On current form, Salah is on course to join Henry as just the second player to achieve such a feat.
However, there is a cautionary tale to consider in the shape of Mesut Özil. Before De Bruyne equalled Henry’s record for most assists in a Premier League season, Özil looked almost certain to surpass the Frenchman in 2015-16.
Özil reached the end of 2015 with 16 assists to his name, putting him within just four of Henry by this point in the season – Salah has three fewer at the same point. The German then went on to only add another three before the conclusion of the season, his slump reflective of the Arsenal’s broader struggles in the second half of 2015-16.
Of course, just because someone else faded and fell short of that record before doesn’t mean the same has to happen to Salah. To be honest, the simple fact he’s never tallied fewer than 27 goal involvements in a single Premier League season highlights just how accustomed he is to enjoying consistency and effectiveness over full seasons.
Sure, he may not manage to keep up his current rate, but the signs are very promising that he’ll remain a huge threat right until the season ends, mainly because his past has few warning signs. Every player has slumps, but Salah’s have never lasted for long at Liverpool.
Perhaps focusing on goal involvements is somewhat reductive because it obviously heavily favours attackers and doesn’t take into consideration the many other important aspects of the game – these would be fair points.
But when it comes to assessing decisive output, what’s more impactful than scoring and setting up goals? Fairly or not, football tends to view the contributions of attackers above all because you can’t win games without scoring, and Salah is on course to break a host of major records for his contributions.
There’s a way to go yet, admittedly, and who’s to say where his future lies, but there is a scenario where Salah’s final six months in the Premier League cap off the greatest individual season we’ve ever seen.
It would be one heck of a mic drop.
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