The top two in the current Premier League standings meet at Etihad Stadium on Saturday lunchtime in the latest instalment of the fixture involving teams who have repeatedly battled each other for the game’s biggest prizes.
Salah previewed the eagerly anticipated clash in a chat with former Reds forward Florent Sinama-Pongolle at the AXA Training Centre. It makes us [a] better team, it makes us better players and I’m sure it makes the manager a better manager as well. When you always know that someone is going to win the games and someone is always waiting for you to lose a game, you always work harder than you usually do. It makes us [a] better team and better players.
On becoming more of a leader…
We felt – me, Virgil and the other guys, Robbo, Ali – that we need to really take a step forward and just try to handle everything – Trent, for sure, he’s still young anyway! – to make everybody feel [at] home and just have a good group. I think the group is fantastic. The players are nice and have very good personalities. They just want to work hard and they just want to achieve stuff, which is a good thing. We try to help them. They need to help themselves and I’m sure they watch us [in] what we’re doing and just try to learn. On his relationship with Darwin Nunez…
I think because he saw that I’m always looking at him when he’s running and [I’m] just trying to give him assists, try to give him balls, he’s always trying his best to give me the ball back. I think because we are both fast and we both have speed, it makes us understand each other’s game.
But also when Cody plays in that position, he’s a fantastic guy. If you understand their game, your game is going to be easier. So I’m trying always to understand the other players’ games, so I know where I could be in that position with this player and with other players it’s different. Kostas and Robbo [are] completely different, Darwin and Cody are also different. So I have to adapt with the players who are going to play and who’s where.
Mohamed Salah believes his and Liverpool’s levels have been raised as a result of their frequent and fierce duels with Manchester City for silverware over the years.
