Jürgen Klopp highlighted why Mohamed Salah was a deserving winner of the PFA Players’ Player of the Year award for the 2021-22 season.

After a vote by his peers, Liverpool’s Egyptian was announced as the winner of the coveted honour for the second time in his career on Thursday evening.

The No.11 was honoured for a spectacular season in which he scored 31 goals and added 15 assists across all competitions, with colleagues Virgil van Dijk and Sadio Mane also making the final six-man shortlist.

 “What I really love about this prize is that it’s voted for by the players,” Klopp said.

“That’s the one prize that you should be interested in.

“Whatever the supporters say, your own supporters always say, ‘Oh you’re the greatest’ and all the others say, ‘How can he win it?’

“So, in Mo’s case obviously it’s the numbers, scoring goals.

“But scoring the most goals and having the most assists, with all the ups and downs during a season, all the things I know about football, that’s a deserved winner.”

Salah also climbed to seventh place on the Reds’ all-time scoring list during the 2021-22 season.

After joining the club from AS Roma in the summer of 2017, the attacker has 156 goals in 254 appearances for the club.

Klopp spoke of his first impressions of the player:

“I saw that [how he could improve] when we scouted him, when I saw a lot of videos of Mo. Let me say it like this, he was not the finishing monster we see now.

“I was incredibly excited about the chance to work together with him. We spoke, yes, that was a very good talk but obviously we all need longer to know about a person.

“The moment I knew it will be outstanding [was] when I knew him as a person, because he’s full of desire, he never will stop developing and he’s a workhorse.

“I know we say it a lot but he’s really the first in – maybe around Millie, maybe Millie beats him from time to time – and he’s the last out. So treatment, gym work, all these kinds of things. 

“On the pitch, if you tell Mo because of the intensity of the games, ‘Mo, you go in now. Thank you very much’. ‘I’m good, I’m good, get me another 10 balls.’

“So he deserves it absolutely, and that’s why he’s the second-time winner of this wonderful trophy. Well deserved, Mo, by the way!”