Revealed: Premier League MVP rankings with magic Mo Salah on top… but he’s second to a cult hero in the all-time list

Mo Salah controls the ball inside the penalty area and for a split second the game pauses around him. All inside Anfield catch their breath and tighten their focus. A brief air of panic grips those supposed to stop him.

When he moves again, Liverpool’s shape has shifted, pockets of spaces have appeared, his pass finds Alexis Mac Allister who applies the finish. Newcastle are two goals down.

This, by his own prolific standards, proved to be a humble contribution by Salah to Liverpool’s 20th victory of this Premier League campaign. It goes into the record books as his 17th assist and alongside his 25 goals means he has been directly involved in 42 of the 66 goals scored by Arne Slot’s runaway leaders. And those 42 goals and assists have earned Liverpool 33 points.

Salah is for Liverpool, more than ever, what the Americans like to call the Most Valuable Player. It might be a team sport and all that, but every team will have one and some stand out more clearly than others.

Alexander Isak has scored or assisted more than half of Newcastle’s 46 Premier League goals. His 24 goals and assists have been worth 18 points to Eddie Howe’s team, the same as Chris Wood’s 21 goals and assists for Nottingham Forest. Erling Haaland and Ollie Watkins are close behind with goals and assists worth 16 points. Liam Delap, whose impressive debut season in the top flight has bigger clubs circling, has been responsible for almost half of Ipswich’s goals.

None, however, come close to Salah. In fact, in the Premier League era, only Matt Le Tissier has recorded a greater share of his team’s goals and assists over the course of a season than Salah.

Alexander Isak and Chris Wood (right) are vital to their sides but no other player can match the Reds winger

Only Southampton legend Matt Le Tissier can measure up, courtesy of his immense 1993-94 season for the Saints

That was in 1993-94, when Le Tissier scored 25 of Southampton’s 49 goals and assisted nine others, including a spectacular end to the season as Saints under Alan Ball escaped relegation by taking 10 points from their last six games. Le Tissier missed one of those through injury and scored eight and registered six assists in the other five.

He thrived under Ball, a World Cup winner who commanded respect when he arrived at Southampton, stopped training during one of his first sessions and gathered the players around Le Tissier to make it clear beyond doubt. ‘This is your best player,’ said Ball. ‘This is your best chance of getting out of trouble.

‘I’m going to put him right in the middle of the pitch. When you have the chance to get the ball to his feet, you have to do it. Ask yourselves, “Can I get the ball to Le Tiss?” He will do the rest.’ And he did.

And just as Ball did with Le Tissier, so Slot has found a way to squeeze the maximum from his best attacking player. Perhaps that is a natural consequence of a more orderly style than under Jurgen Klopp. A little more control and a little less chaos. Liverpool will not play at full throttle for the entire game in every game.

This, for one, puts less of a strain on the athletes, which might help a player in his 30s. With five substitutions, forwards have become accustomed to fewer minutes.

Yet none of the Premier League’s top scorers this season have played more than Salah’s 2,483 minutes. Slot likes to make changes across the front line but the outside right does not change. He has started in every league game and hardly ever comes off.

Moreover, the air of authority and control about Slot’s Liverpool gives their forward players a fraction more time to make the right decision in front of goal, whether that is to pass or shoot, or in Salah’s case to exert his genius. His shot conversion rate this season (25 goals from 101 shots at 24.8 per cent) is his best for Liverpool and much better than every season since his first (32 goals from 144 shots at 22.2 per cent). Last season, it was 15.8 per cent. The season before it was 15.2 per cent.

Salah is not the footballer he was when he arrived from Roma at 25, dancing through tackles on mazy dribbles, speeding clear and scoring wonderful solo goals.

He can and does sometimes, but he is eight years older and a marked man for some time. If you want to beat Liverpool, you hatch a plan to silence Salah.

Under Arne Slot in his maiden season, Salah has been able to get the maximum out of his game

But one of the massive boosts Salah has at his disposal is a team stuffed with quality players

At 32, Salah understands his craft. He knows how he is most likely to score his goals and make them, and the areas of the pitch where he wants to be. He is still in terrific physical shape. Slot’s change of emphasis, more pragmatic and maybe not so evangelical about a high-intensity press with different patterns of play, has made Salah more efficient.

He also takes the penalties. Seven in the Premier League this season. Matheus Cunha, who is fifth on this list headed by Salah, is responsible for nearly 46 per cent of the goals scored by Wolves without scoring a single penalty.

Salah, for all his brilliance, is surrounded by quality. Just behind him, arguably the most creative full-back in world football in Trent Alexander-Arnold. Inside, intelligent midfielders, tactically aware and with the vision to find him. Up front, pace and slick movement and finishers on the end of chances he creates.

That’s the thing about assists. If nobody finishes them, they’re just passes, no matter how good they are. And if somebody does score, they’re officially assists, no matter how ordinary. No jokes about Darwin Nunez, please.