There is a good chance that Liverpool have the world’s most outstanding footballer in their team this season.

It has been a long while since the Reds could technically claim such a feat, with Michael Owen’s Ballon d’Or win in 2001 an offical-ish recognition of that fact.

Fast forward 24 years and Mohamed Salah is making a good case to follow in Owen’s footsteps at Anfield.

Salah is quite probably the current favourite to win the 2025 edition, with his goal-scoring and assisting feats at Liverpool reaching unworldly levels.

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However, amazingly, not everyone is quite so convinced by Liverpool’s Egyptian King.

Former Watford striker Troy Deeney has been a vocal critic of Salah.

And after Deeney claimed that Salah is not ‘world-class‘ recently, the pundit has revealed how the 32-year-old’s Liverpool teammates have since reacted to him.

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Deeney has never been shy of an opinion, even when he was still in his playing days.

Now that he has turned to punditry, the gloves have come off somewhat.

Plenty of people disagreed with his comments about Salah, with Liverpool’s No.11 quite obviously a bona fide world-class player.

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Nevertheless, speaking on TalkSPORT, Deeney has suggested that the Liverpool squad have not appeared to hold his take against him.

“He’s very naturally talented, it’s just what you like to see.

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“I’ve seen Mo at games when I was working for CBS, you chat to the players.

No, because I’m saying it as respectfully as I can, I’m not trying to offend anyone.”

As well as engaging with the Liverpool players, Deeney goes on to say that he has also been speaking to Reds supporters about his Salah take.

Speaking in a separate TalkSPORT segment, Deeney says on a recent visit to Anfield he posed a question to fans pitting Salah against Luis Suarez.

“I was speaking to a few Liverpool fans when I was last up there a couple of weeks back and I asked this question because a lot of people think I have an agenda, I don’t really care,” he said.

“So, I said when you watched Luis Suarez, the two years he had before he went to Barcelona, would you say that Luis Suarez and the Mo Salah you’re getting now, which one made you go ‘oh my God, that’s unreal’ and the four or five lads I was speaking to said, ‘yeah probably Suarez, however Salah delivers more’ and I said you’re saying exactly what I’m saying.”

Suarez was in a world of his own for some of the things he could do with a football.

But for sheer effectiveness, Salah takes the cake.