Jurgen Klopp tells Mohamed Salah he must maintain Liverpool form until the end of the season
Salah scored his 20th goal of the season against Bournemouth
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Your support makes all the difference.Jurgen Klopp reminded Mohamed Salah he needs to maintain his formidable form until the end of the season after the Egyptian scored his 20th goal of the campaign in Liverpool’s 4-0 win at Bournemouth.
Former Chelsea forward Salah made it 14 goals in as many matches to propel Klopp’s team back into the Champions League places. Philippe Coutinho, Dejan Lovren and Roberto Fermino were the Merseysiders’ other scorers.
But manager Klopp was reluctant to be too gushing in his praise of Anfield’s new cult hero and says it is too early to get carried away by Salah’s remarkable performances.
“I do not go to bed at night, thinking ‘wow how good is Salah? He is a very important player for us, like all of the others,” Klopp said. “It is only halfway through the season. I am looking forward that he stays in that shape, still plays like this.
“Mo knows how much I respect and like him. He is finding it easy at the moment to finish situations.”
The victory lifted Liverpool above Arsenal and into the top four and Klopp afterwards admitted it may take an enormous points haul to stay there.
After conceding it is highly unlikely anybody will catch run-away leaders Manchester City, the German said: “We have so much to play for. It’s unbelievable how many points you will probably need at the end of the season to get anything.
“Everybody is winning up there very often so we need to carry on all the time and stay on track. It feels like a lot of teams are in good shape.”
Liverpool had unhappy memories of their last trip to the Vitality Stadium last season when they threw away a 3-1 lead and lost 4-3 in stoppage time.
Klopp was relieved to see his side bury that ghost, adding: “It’s a really tough place to come and if you are not as concentrated and focused as we were today it’s impossible to get something.
“From the first minute we were absolutely spot on. We controlled the game in the second half and were never really every troubled. I am really happy with the whole package we showed today.
“When it was 3-0 at half time people will have remembered what happened last season but thankfully this time we kept control of the game.”
“It is our Christmas party tonight and we can really enjoy it because this is the first time we have won the match before.”
The defeat means Bournemouth have now gone five games without a win and are only one point and two places above the relegation zone.
But manager Eddie Howe admitted Liverpool were almost unplayable.
“I do not want to play Liverpool again anytime soon. It was a tough game. We were disappointing from start to finish,” he said. “Liverpool are the type of team that if you don’t turn up they will punish you with the quality they have.”
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