Mohamed Salah Picks Jordan Henderson as Player of the Season

With the way Liverpool have played this season, securing a first league title in three decades and on pace to set a domestic points record, there are plenty of players who deserve praise—and plenty who could be named player of the season.

According to Mohamed Salah, though, if he had to pick out just one teammate for the role they have played in Liverpool’s success this season, his choice would be for captain Jordan Henderson, the Reds’ long-overlooked workhorse in midfield.

“All of us deserve to be the best player,” Salah said when asked to pick the season’s standout. “If you ask 10 people about [Virgil] Van Dijk, nine will say he deserves it for sure. If you ask 10 people about Trent [Alexander-Arnold], nine will say definitely.

“But if I have to pick, I’ll choose Henderson, our captain. He was criticised a lot, and people wanted him out of Liverpool, but he fought back and proved to everyone that he deserves to be our captain, plus he was always helping everyone.”

With Van Dijk being named the consensus choice as Liverpool’s top player last season, the expectation is that most will look elsewhere—and the same goes for Salah, who won universal praise for his goalscoring prowess the season before that.

That would seem to leave Henderson along with Alexander-Arnold and Sadio Mané, who has arguably been Liverpool’s best forward in his best season at the club, as the frontrunners and most likely player of the year candidates.

Whichever way the votes go, it will be hard to argue against whichever Liverpool player does get that individual honour. And in the end, more important that any individual awards are the team honours—and preparing to try to win even more next year.

“Staying at our peak is not something easy, but we’ll play hard to keep winning trophies,” Salah added. “It’s impossible to say that I have enough trophies—I will continue to do my best to make next year better than the one before.”