Mohamed Salah has been at Liverpool for seven and a half seasons now — and already in 2024/25, he has confirmed that he will hit the 20-goal mark for the eighth time in a row.

It is a truly remarkable level of consistency and the records continue to fall. Salah is inside Liverpool's top four goalscorers of all time now and last week he became the first player in the Premier League to hit double figures for both goals and assists before Christmas. Against West Ham, that was the ninth time this season he has scored and assisted in the same game.

Incisive in the final third, Salah was insightful during his post-match interview with Sky Sports. As was always going to be the case, though, the last question — the one about his contract situation — was the one that was going to be listened to the most.

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"No, we're far away from that (giving some good news on his future)," Salah said. "I don't want to put something in the media and people start saying stuff, but nothing has moved and now we're focused on the team."

"The only thing in my mind is I want Liverpool to win the league and I want to be a part of that," he added. "That's the only thing I think about this season. I will do my best for the team to win the trophy.

"We're going in the right direction, but there are a few other teams trying to catch us and they're very good teams. We have to stay focused, humble, work hard and go again."

While Salah is in the best form of his life in terms of pure numbers — scoring and creating combined — there is also a contrast to be drawn with the last time he played at the London Stadium. On that day, he brushed past reporters in the mixed zone declaring there "would be fire" if he stopped to speak having fallen out with Jurgen Klopp on the sidelines during the match.

"The players before the game in the dressing room told me, ‘Oh, remember what happened here last year?’," he reflected. "And the guys were laughing. Virgil [van Dijk] started it! We had a bit of a laugh about that. We had not a nice memory here last year but I’m glad this one we had a better one."

Top of the league by a distance, Liverpool looks a happier place now than then. In large part, that is down to Salah being much more himself — now well over the injury that slowed him down in the first half of the calendar year.

Rejuvenated under Arne Slot — something that might have happened had there not been a change in the summer, of course — Salah has been exceptional. "We didn't know Salah could get any better but somehow he has," the Dutch coach said this weekend.

Asked if he thought Salah was the best in the world, Slot simply added: "If you look at his numbers you can't argue with it. There are a lot of players in different leagues with a lot of quality but Mo is definitely up there at the moment."

The questions about his contract will keep on coming but so too do the goals. There is only one reason for both of those things: right now, he is the best soccer player on the planet. Fact.