Mohamed Salah has been crowned this season’s PFA Player of the Year.
The Liverpool forward beat off competition from Manchester City counterpart Kevin de Bruyne to scoop the accolade after an impressive debut year at Anfield.
Tottenham’s Harry Kane, who is vying with the Egypt international for the Premier League’s Golden Boot, finished third in the running.
Salah heads into Tuesday’s Champions League semi-final with Roma former club having scored 41 goals in 46 competitive outings to date.
He becomes the first Reds player since Luis Suarez in the 2013/14 campaign to be voted the award winner by his fellow professionals.
“It’s an honour to win this award especially because it was voted for by the other players,” said Salah.
“I would like to thank my team-mates and everyone at the club for helping me to make this happen.”
Congratulations to @LFC‘s Mo Salah, crowned the Men’s PFA Players’ Player of the Year 👏🏆 #PFAAwards pic.twitter.com/fpvxwZgfdP
— PFA (@PFA) April 22, 2018
Jurgen Klopp hailed Salah’s personal accomplishment as an ‘unbelievable honour’ for the ex-Chelsea player since his £36.9 million move last summer.
He said: “It is really rare in football that you win as an individual, an individual trophy, because it is a team game.
“But in this, the team lives from personalities, from characters, from players and I am really happy that I had the opportunity to be your manager in the last year.
“I think this award, you are voted for from all the other players in all the leagues in England, is an unbelievable honour so you can be really proud and your family can be really proud.”
Five other Liverpool representatives have previously won the award, including Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush, John Barnes and Steven Gerrard.
Salah could eclipse Rush as the leading goal scorer in a single campaign with only six goals currently separating him from the Anfield legend’s tally of 47.