Liverpool manager Arne Slot showered praise on Mohamed Salah after the team’s 3-0 Champions League win at Marseille on Wednesday. Salah made a return from the Africa Cup of Nations and came up with a decent performance.

The Egypt International was not part of the starting XI for Liverpool after a 4-1 loss at home to PSV Eindhoven eight weeks ago. Slot said Salah’s familiarity with his teammates and his experience helped him in making a smooth comeback.

“It helps that he is already for so long with us so he knows his teammates and he knows how we want to play,” Slot said in his postmatch news conference. “It says a lot about how big of a professional he is that being away from us for a month in a different team, he was so fit to play 90 today.

“He was close to a goal, a good ball from Cody [Gakpo] and usually that’s a goal for him. Tonight it wasn’t, but it didn’t harm us because we scored three. I think overall, I saw a lot of very good individual performances as I saw against Arsenal, as I saw against Burnley and as I saw tonight.”

Reflecting on his team’s overall performance at the Stade Veledrome on Wednesday, Slot said: “The thing that was different for the first time this season than all the other games was that the moment we were having a big chance to score the 2-0 that hit the post, 10 seconds later they had a big chance. Usually this season this ball goes in and we’re all complaining, but now the ball went over, and we extended our lead to 2-0 and 3-0.

“The performance is still the same, but the perspective of how people probably talk about is us completely different.”

Earlier in December, Salah said he felt “thrown under the bus” by the Premier League champion by being dropped after a series of games lost.

Liverpool will next take on Bournemouth on Saturday in the Premier League.