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Mohamed Salah quietly revealed dressing room thoughts as further Liverpool evidence emerges
With so many months of the season still to play, Premier League and Champions League leaders Liverpool may still very well end up trophyless under Arne Slot this term. But having won 17 of his first 19 games as head coach, some tongue-in-cheek suggestions have been aired that the odds are now even tumbling on the Reds boss putting a run together for the Boat Race and Grand National in 2025.
Victory over Real Madrid on Wednesday night secured a fifth successive victory in the new-look European Cup, meaning Slot's team have become the first one to be guaranteed at least a spot in the play-offs with three games to spare. On this evidence, however, it won't be anything they will need to fall back on.
Girona are up next before PSV Eindhoven and Lille in the New Year and by then, Slot might just be resting and rotating for battles on the domestic front, where they have the opportunity to go a barely believable 11 points clear at the summit this weekend at home to Manchester City.
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With a somewhat surprise opportunity opening up at the top of the table on the domestic front, progress in the Champions League - aided by the adjustment of thinking needed around the restructured format - is going under the radar somewhat at Anfield.
Big Champions League nights are a rite of passage for any Liverpool manager so Slot is simply continuing a long-standing trend with his early sequence and with wins over AC Milan in the San Siro, last season's Bundesliga Invincibles Bayer Leverkusen and now the 15-time European champions Real Madrid - the most prestigious side in the tournament's history, no less - the new man at the helm has started in stunning fashion.
Slot, perhaps doing his best to dampen the expectations now after the Reds’ first win in nine against los Blancos, discussed just how significant the victory itself should be viewed considering fans, media and the players and coaches involved are all still adapting to the perceptions of the Swiss League format.
"For me [the win] will be even more if we go into the later stages," Slot says. "Because this is such a strange and different set up in the Champions League that it is difficult to judge how important these wins are. If we have arrived in the last 16 or wherever we arrive and then we are able to beat them (Madrid) that would be maybe a bigger statement than this but we are definitely happy with the win."
It's an interesting point and a worthy topic of debate. For Real Madrid, they will have known that defeat was not terminal to their overall hopes of a 16th Champions League crown and they will, despite a so far indifferent defence of their title, still expect to be at the business end once more next year.
That, though, should be of no concern to Liverpool fans who were able to celebrate a first win over them for 15 years on Wednesday night as an eight-game winless run that includes two finals came to an end with a swashbuckling performance that featured so many standout displays.
"It's a bad result against the best-performing team in Europe," admitted Jude Bellingham after the game. "It's no disgrace to come here and lose but we are disappointed in how we performed. From the first minute they took control of the game."
And while the lion's share of the attention is still trained on Premier League fortunes, given the exciting way the table is shaping up as we creep towards the December period, it's clear from Mohamed Salah's words lately that European glory remains firmly on the agenda in the Anfield dressing room.
Speaking to reporters that included the ECHO outside St Mary's last Sunday, Salah, among other things, made no secret of his desire for a second Champions League winner's medal this term, revealing: "I'm not going to retire soon so I'm just playing, focusing on the season and I'm trying to win the Premier League and hopefully the Champions League as well."
That came hot on the heels of a chat with official club channels during November's international break when he stated: "[I want to] win it all, I work so hard every day. I hate the idea we are underdogs now. We have an incredible group, one of the best in the world. In each position you are going to find a player that is one of the top three in the world so why we don't win it? This city and this club has to always fight for everything."
So while the merits of big scalps in the new single-league format might be debated over the course of this and future seasons, victory over Real Madrid only provides further evidence that this Liverpool team under Slot is genuinely ready to challenge for the biggest honours around. Although maybe not the Boat Race or the Grand National just yet.
