Former England International Chris Sutton has joined the many voices anointing Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah as the best in the world and has explained why he's currently ahead of some other elite operators.
Salah continued his excellent start to the 2021-22 season on Saturday, scoring his seventh goal of the Premier League season in a 5-0 win over a hapless Watford side.
As he did against Manchester City before the international break, Salah wriggled past a number of challenges inside the penalty area and finished with a rasping strike.
The Egyptian has been sensational in recent weeks for Liverpool and it's difficult to argue against him being top of the pile in world football at the moment.
In his column for the Daily Mail , Sutton said Salah is currently out on his own as an individual and suggested that the standard of opposition he is producing against is what's setting him apart from the likes of Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland.
"He’s better than Lionel Messi. Better than Cristiano Ronaldo. Better than Robert Lewandowski, Karim Benzema, Erling Haaland and whoever else you want to counter with.
"They’re world-class players, all of them, but Salah is playing out of this world at the moment.
"Where we see Premier League defenders, Salah sees those little orange cones that you use on the training field. He dances around them and scores — as we saw against Manchester City before the international break and as we saw against Watford.
"Not only that, he is doing all of this in the most difficult league in the world, which should be taken into account when deciding who is the world’s best.
"Kylian Mbappe scored a winner at the weekend, for example, but Ligue 1 doesn’t compare in terms of difficulty, whereas Salah has scored in seven of his eight Premier League games this season."
With Salah performing at this level, the Reds will feel confident of challenging for major honours come the end of the campaign.
The forward will be desperate to continue his hot streak this week, as the Reds face two potentially challenging games.
On Tuesday they take on Spanish champions Atletico Madrid in the Champions League before making the trip to Old Trafford on Sunday to face a struggling Manchester United outfit.
