Mohamed Salah matches goal & assist record set by peak Lionel Messi | OneFootball

Liverpool superstar Mohamed Salah took his tally of goal involvements for the season up to 49 across all competitions on Wednesday night.

Salah scored Liverpool's opener against Aston Villa and then registered an assist for Trent Alexander-Arnold's strike that secured an invaluable point from a challenging game.

In the Premier League alone, the Egyptian icon has 24 goals and 15 assists to his name. The Aston Villa game was the tenth in the league this season in which Salah has both scored and assisted, the first time in the 33-year history of the competition that milestone has ever been achieved.

Salah is also the first player in one of Europe's big five leagues (Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1) to have reached ten such games since Lionel Messi a decade ago.

On that occasion, a 27-year-old Messi managed 11 games with both a goal and assist in La Liga. The eight-time Ballon d’Or winner did 12 three years earlier in 2011/12 when he was at his sensational best, a campaign that delivered 69 goal involvements in 37 La Liga games.

The last player to score and assist in ten games in a top five league season was Lionel Messi (11) in 2014/15 / Alex Caparros/GettyImages

Liverpool still have another 12 Premier League games to play, so Salah could conceivably yet go well beyond Messi's figures in terms of scoring and assisting in the same match.

Only four other players in Premier League history have hit 15 or more goals and 15 or more assists in a single league campaign, leaving Salah in very fine company. They are: Eric Cantona in 1992/93 (15 goals, 16 assists), Matt Le Tissier in 1994/95 (19 goals, 15 assists), Thierry Henry in 2002/03 (24 goals, 20 assists) and Eden Hazard in 2018/19 (16 goals, 15 assists).

The all-time Premier League record for assists in a single season is 20, jointly held by Henry, as above, and Kevin De Bruyne from 2019/20. It was thought that record could be under threat in 2024/25 from Bukayo Saka after his blistering start to the campaign. But the Arsenal winger has been forced to miss several months through injury, with Salah now moving into position to break it instead.