Mohamed Salah (front) of Liverpool competes with Chelsea's Antonio Rudiger on January 2, 2022 in London, England. Photo: VCG

Jurgen Klopp was forthright ahead of Liverpool's trip to Chelsea last weekend for their first game of 2022. The Reds had been undergoing a minor blip in their otherwise imperious form, embodied by Egyptian goal king Mohamed Salah missing a penalty in their shock 1-0 defeat to Leicester City in their final game of 2021.  

Salah and his strike partner Sadio Mane, who had matched his previous longest barren run since moving to ­Anfield from Southampton, had borne the brunt of the scrutiny in the post-match inquest. Klopp was having none of it. 

"Top, top, top-class players deal constantly with failure," Klopp said in the pre-match press conference ahead of the trip to Stamford Bridge.  

"That's our life. That's what you learn pretty early as a footballer. The better you are, the more often you will fail because you come constantly in these decisive moments. 

"None of us has ever succeeded in all difficult situations. That's how it is. Kobe Bryant is still the player with the most missed situations in NBA history and he is one of the greatest players ever. 

Bryant, who died in January 2020, sits fourth on the NBA's all-time top points scorer list with 33,643 and has the record for most missed shots at 14,481.  

"You have to try it," Klopp said. "You have to come in these situations and then you can fail. If you fail there, no problem, go again and everything will be fine. That is pretty much the mind-set Mo is in and Sadio as well." 

"We don't have a lot of experience with Mo of dealing with 'crisis' or whatever because he didn't have to," Klopp said of a player who has the most goal involvements across Europe's top leagues this season. 

It had been said that Mane lacked confidence because of his barren run, but Klopp was not entertaining that notion.  

"Sadio has no problem with confidence, but the momentum finishing-wise is not there at the moment," the Liverpool boss said. 

"Pretty much all strikers have to go through these kinds of things. You have to take it from time to time and then it will be good again. It happened to Sadio before and he came out of it. He scored incredibly important goals for us and I'm really positive that he has chances to score [against Leicester City]." 

Klopp, who missed the visit to West London after a positive COVID-19 test, was right about both Mane and Salah.  

The Senegal star scored the opening goal against Chelsea, pouncing on an error from Nathan Chalobah before rounding Edouard Mendy and firing past Cesar Azpilicueta on the line. It was a finish that did not lack confidence. 

Salah then put the visitors 2-0 up with another sensational strike to add to his showreel, ghosting past Marcos Alonso and firing past Mendy at his near post. The Egyptian almost added a second of his own after the interval but the Senegal keeper tipped his long-range lob past the post.  

There was little reason to doubt Salah, who moved to 25 goal involvements for the season in the English Premier League. He would have matched Alan Shearer's all-time record of 25 before Christmas Day had he scored from the spot against the Foxes, instead having to settle for matching Thierry Henry and Luis Suarez on 24.  

With that 25th goal involvement of the season - 16 goals and nine assists - Salah marked his fifth consecutive season of reaching the 25-goal mark. Only former Arsenal star Henry has more, with a run of seven seasons from 1999-2000 to 2005-06. 

In both scoring, Mane and Salah notched up another record. This was the 29th English Premier League game where the duo had both scored, thereby matching the old First Division record of scoring together in 29 matches set by Manchester United teammates Bobby Charlton and George Best.  

It took the Old Trafford pair eight years between 1964 and 1972 to do so while Liverpool's dynamic duo have done so in just four seasons together since Salah arrived in 2017. 

The bad news for Liverpool is that Mane and Salah will now be absent for a prolonged period. After proving their worth once more they boarded planes to Cameroon to represent their countries at the African Cup of Nations. The ­tournament runs from January 9 to February 6 and both Mane's Senegal and Salah's Egypt will hope to be at the Olembe Stadium in Yaounde for the final. 

If both were to stick around for the whole tournament then they could miss four English Premier League games, as well as the FA Cup third-round match with Shrewsbury Town and both ­Carabao Cup semifinals against Arsenal.  

These could be pivotal weeks for Liverpool's season as they look to hunt down runaway league leaders Manchester City. Nevertheless, Liverpool assistant boss Pep Lijnders wished his departing players, including Guinea's Naby Keita, well after standing in for Klopp at Stamford Bridge.  

"I just told the boys Naby, Mo and Sadio that they should try to win the AFCON because it is a prize to catch and the careers are never long and they deserve to fight for each prize. 

"This prize now comes in front of them - it's a tournament with so much passion, so much culture and it is a really proud situation if you can play for your country, if it's England or Germany or Holland or whoever and that's what they have and feel. 

"So they are African legends, they are legends for me, but if they win it they will probably be even bigger legends so they should try with all they have to win it." 

They will be bigger legends at Anfield if they can come back to score the goals that help them win the league.