WITH Mo Salah and Spurs, you knew there would be fire.
Not the kind of flames the Egyptian warned he would unleash if he spoke to reporters after last week’s touchline bust-up with Jurgen Klopp.
But the sort of blazing scoring form that has made him one of the Premier League’s hottest goal-getters in the last seven years – with Tottenham so often getting burnt.
Salah’s opener here, after he was put straight back into the team following that fracas at West Ham, was his 12th strike against the North Londoners.
The only club to feel his wrath more is Manchester United, against whom he has notched 14.
His other favoured opposition are Manchester City, West Ham (both 11) and Arsenal (ten) – summing up just what a big-game player the 31-year-old is.
Salah may have faded in recent weeks, this game aside.
But that lethal record against the best the Premier League has to offer shows how much the Reds will miss him if he does follow Klopp out the exit door this summer.
Having said that, Spurs looked more like the worst in the top flight today as Ange Postecoglou’s struggling side made it easy for their hosts.
From Guglielmo Vicario’s weak effort to repel Salah’s early header, to Emerson Royal having his pocket picked in the build-up to Cody Gakpo making it 3-0, the visitors had a shocker.
Left-back Andy Robertson made it two goals in as many games in between those strikes, firing in after a shot was saved by Salah, who also teed up a worldie for Harvey Elliott.
The emphatic victory kept Liverpool technically in the title race, even though it would take a miracle for them to overhaul City and Arsenal at this point.
It resembled more of a fun day out for fans to remind them of what their icon Klopp is capable of creating on what was his penultimate home game in charge before he walks into the sunset at the end of the season.
The Anfield experience must have been anything but fun for boyhood Liverpool supporter Postecoglou, whose first campaign is in danger of unravelling.
This was their fourth defeat on the trot, their second where they have shipped four and their dismal away record in the league now stands at one win in nine.
More worryingly, the free-flowing fare dubbed Angeball which delivered a hat-trick of Manager of the Month awards at the start of the season was in short supply.
They did not get close to capitalising on the favour Aston Villa did them by losing at Brighton earlier in the day.
