Arne Slot paid tribute to "special" Mohamed Salah after the Liverpool forward became the first player in club history to reach 50 goals in Europe as Lille were beaten 2-1 in the Champions League.

Reds star Salah scored his 22nd of the campaign when latching on to Curtis Jones's through ball in the first half before steering past goalkeeper Lucas Chevalier. Harvey Elliott's deflected effort made it 2-1 in the second period after Jonathan David had levelled for the Ligue 1 side, who also had Aissa Mandi sent off.

Asked to sum up Salah's latest contribution, Slot was full of praise for his top goalscorer after the Champions League leaders chalked up a seventh straight victory to leave them needing only a point at PSV Eindhoven next week to finish top of the 32-team table.

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"Special, that is the word to describe Mo’s performance at this club," Slot said. "The best or maybe there are even better words to use, but he has been outstanding at this club for so many years, so still he is.

"Today it was a great goal, when Mo goes on a one-v-one there is a serious chance he will score. But this goal tells you so much about why we are top of the league and why we are doing so well, the work rate of the players who won the ball back before Curtis passes to Mo tells you why we are doing really well."

Lille striker David's equaliser in the second half saw a run of nine hours and 59 minutes without conceding a goal in Europe come to an end, which is a new club record. It was the first concession of a Champions League goal for the leaders since Christian Pulisic netted after three minutes of the opening day victory over AC Milan in mid-September and Slot explained what he put such a run down to.

He added: "I am very pleased, where I put everything down to, first of all the quality of the players and second, these players have a quality work rate. If you combine those two things it is very difficult to score against the team.

"Apart from that, there are also games, when I look back at Girona for example, they created quite a lot of chances, Alisson was fantastic back then, so the nice thing for me is we keep clean sheets not by defending a lot, we keep clean sheets by attacking a lot.

"That makes it even more nice than if we are all the time in a low block, kicking the ball away, don’t take any risks in build up and keep a clean sheet, still nice but I prefer it like this and I think the fans prefer it like this as well."