The new Mo Salah: How Liverpool's devastating superstar went to a new level this season, what he's doing differently and the one thing driving him on to glory, writes IAN LADYMAN

With five minutes remaining of what may be a decisive victory over Manchester City, Mohamed Salah chased yet another ball down the right flank and span in frustration when he didn’t make it.

Immediately his manager Arne Slot indicated he should turn and close down City defender Ruben Dias. Without hesitation, Salah did it.

It is on the back of such selfless and unstinting hard work and discipline that perhaps the most significant victory of Liverpool’s season was won.

We have seen much that has been impressive from Slot’s team in the Dutch coach’s debut Premier League season. Now we can add winning without the ball to all that, too.

Liverpool won this one against their great modern rivals on the back of just 34 per cent possession and the yards covered, tackles won, headers made and causes chased said everything for the collective desire that runs through this team.

Salah personifies this in a way he didn’t always. The Egyptian has long been a sublime scorer of goals, a terroriser of the very best defences, but now he is more than that. Now he is complete, a 32-year-old driven by a desire to prevail, a visceral need to make up for much of what has gone before during his eight seasons at Anfield.

Mohamed Salah scored his 25th Premier League goal of the season in a masterful display

Salah now personifies the collective desire that runs through his side in a way he didn't before

That may sound a strange thing to say about a player who has won everything there is to win in club football. But something he said after this victory was simple and telling.

‘We need another title,’ said Salah. ‘Me and the big guys in the team, we need another title.’

You see, pain is not written on any sportsman’s c.v. but it’s often there between the lines. For Salah there has been plenty scattered among the medals and trophies of his years at Liverpool.

Pain against Real Madrid in two Champions League finals. In his dreams, he must still feel the dig of the Sergio Ramos elbow that ended his contribution to the first one, in Kyiv in 2018.

But perhaps more significantly, there has been the pain delivered by those in sky blue, those his goal and assist helped to down on this afternoon of contrasting styles in the Manchester rain.

For all the glamour and style and rock and roll of the Jurgen Klopp years, Salah and the big guys to whom he refers — presumably Trent Alexander-Arnold and Virgil van Dijk — have but a single league title, won in Covid darkness and silence in 2020, to their names, and that is due to the stranglehold City have had on English football during the past decade.

Liverpool finished with 97 points in 2019 and 93 points in 2022. They ended both seasons second to City by a point. To think that wouldn’t have hurt an athlete such as Salah, enough to continue to drive him forwards now, is to misunderstand how professional sportsmen are wired.

Certainly, there was an element of sporting psychology at play here at the Etihad.

Salah has won everything there is to win in club football during his eight seasons at Liverpool

Yet Salah is not content with his trophy haul yet - he revealed that he still wants another title

Arne Slot's side have now moved 11 points clear at the top of the table with 11 games left to play

Having emerged from difficult fixtures against Everton, Wolves and Aston Villa with their lead at the top under threat from Arsenal but also their own sudden uncertainty, Liverpool were given an unexpected opportunity by the north Londoners’ defeat by West Ham on Saturday.

That result changed the mood and from Arsenal’s sudden weakness, Liverpool took clear and obvious strength. That is how sport works. This, though, is a team propelled by more than a sense of opportunity and such fervour drips from their best player like sweat.

In the first half that City dominated in terms of territory, Salah scored one goal and laid another on a plate for Dominik Szoboszlai. However he was equally important in his own half, doing what he could to help Alexander-Arnold in his difficult personal battle with City winger Jeremy Doku.

Without such application from Salah and others, Liverpool would not have come close to winning this game.

Slot said last night that he had not considered the FA Cup loss at Plymouth Argyle, draws at Everton and Villa and a shaky home win over Wolves as a wobble, but everybody who saw those games knew the truth of it. Those who played in them would have known it, too.

Here, Slot’s players hauled themselves out of it on the back of bloody-mindedness and grit. Liverpool even played without a centre forward on Sunday. Slot had three on the bench. But with someone such as Salah so devastating down his side of the field, coming inside and out on either foot, it was not always noticeable.

For the second half, Salah swapped a long-sleeved shirt for a short one. Even that seemed to carry with it a message: just warming up. More to follow.

As it happened, the second 45 minutes were even harder than the first as Liverpool lived inside their own half.

The forward netted one and then laid another on a plate for Dominik Szoboszlai (left) to score

Behind him on Liverpool's right flank Trent Alexander-Arnold struggled to contain Jeremy Doku

But with the Reds keen to hold onto their supremacy, Salah got back to help his team-mate

On TV they were talking about Liverpool having one hand on the trophy. That was desperately premature. One City goal would have energised the Etihad.

The home team have their own targets, their own battles to win, their own demons to banish. This was still City v Liverpool and some things don’t change.

But Liverpool’s red wall was sound. As time wore on, Salah became a permanent part of it. If this is to be his last season at Anfield, he may one day look back on it as his best.

At City, senior players have reached the top of the mountain and plunged alarmingly down the other side.

Salah is still climbing, his eyes on another summit, eased onwards and upwards by a potent and irresistible mixture of optimism and pain.

Click here to read article