Jurgen Klopp has claimed Mohamed Salah has returned to his best form at the ideal time for Manchester United clash.
Salah has a fantastic record against United and no-one tops the 12 goals he has scored in this fixture.
Liverpool will look to him again in Sunday’s FA Cup tie at Old Trafford after he came through 90 minutes against Sparta Prague on Thursday, scoring one goal in the 6-1 romp and assisting for three others.
Salah’s goal made him the first Liverpool player to score at least 20 times in seven successive seasons and Klopp claimed he is “pure quality”.
“The timing is super good,” said the Liverpool boss.
“You saw that last night, how many goals did he set up first half? Then he was involved in everything else pretty much.
“He was exceptional. It was a strange game in the second half, I would have loved to have taken him off, but that was not possible because of Bobby Clark’s injury situation, and he managed that pretty well.
“Even then, he set up another goal which was offside. Mo is pure quality. Ask him what he likes most about Manchester United, but the more we talk about it, the less likely it will happen on Sunday.
“That’s why I don’t like this subject too much. It’s just he’s an exceptional guy, a world-class player. How we dealt without him is unbelievable, the boys did really well.
“But it’s better to have him around and on the pitch than just in the dressing room, so that’s good. We can build it now, his minutes, and, yeah, he’s ready for Sunday.”
United remain the only side to prevent Liverpool from scoring when they drew 0-0 at Anfield in December, but Klopp has a different take on that game. Liverpool had 34 shots and Klopp says that was the first time this season he saw his side “in the next gear”.
“I don’t know in the moment if we can play the same game again, it was a really good game,” he said.
“I would call this game the start of when we reached the next level for the season.
“Until then we were quite OK, we only lost one game, but it was still ‘Ah, sometimes really good, sometimes not so good’. It was difficult to judge us. We had so many things to overcome like red cards, being 1-0 down, so it was not clear how good we actually are.
“That game, I first saw that was really us in the next gear. The result didn’t show that and I have no clue whether it will be the same game, I don’t expect it obviously as it’s a home game for them.
“But a lot of aspects in our game that day were really good and these aspects we’ll try to bring on the pitch again.”
