Jurgen Klopp admits Liverpool got lucky in their £36.9 million ($46m) acquisition of Mohamed Salah, with the Egyptian having proved to be better than anyone at Anfield could have predicted.
The Reds moved to bring the former Chelsea forward back to English football in the summer of 2017.
Salah had flourished in Italy with Fiorentina and Roma since leaving the Premier League, but he was not expected to become a talismanic presence on Merseyside quite so quickly.
The 27-year-old enjoyed a stunning debut campaign with Liverpool, netting 44 times across all competitions and collecting an enviable haul of honours – including the PFA Player of the Year award.
Another 27 goals last season helped Salah to a second Golden Boot and Klopp’s side to Champions League glory, with his German coach happy to acknowledge that the African star has exceeded all expectations.
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Quizzed by the Liverpool Echo on whether he expected Salah to be this good, Klopp said: “No, of course not, I don't even think Mo saw that, that is how it is.
“We all have our dreams and Mo for sure, he dreams big and wants to achieve a lot and that is good. The way we play helped him, the status he had from the first day in the team helped him.
“It was different for him than in other years, we don't have to talk about Chelsea, but it was a completely different role he played and even at Roma, he had Edin Dzeko next to him, he is the main man in the decisive situations, it's 'give the ball to him', that is how it is.
“Like at Barcelona, it is Lionel Messi and stuff like that, so you have these teams, we don't have that here. So he could fill a role that we didn't have in that moment with the two workhorses around him with Bobby [Roberto Firmino] and Sadio [Mane]. It is quite a good offensive line!
“We didn't see that he would score 44 goals but we saw that he would help us and that is the most important thing. I was really happy for him and happy for us. We need a bit of luck with signings, we had that.”
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Salah has helped to fire Liverpool into contention for major honours at home and abroad, with the intention being for the Reds to build on their European triumph from 2018-19.
Klopp, who picked up the coach of the year prize at the FIFA Best awards on Monday, added: “The next step? I don't know.
“It is just to stay on this level and make the next steps and I cannot say that means we will be champions, that is not possible. We have the strongest competitors in the world, that is for sure. If you put Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich in the same league, that would be more difficult, but we have them already in the league, that quality.
“So that makes it really tricky. If we would have had more luck in a season...I don't say Manchester City were lucky, my God, not at all, but they had it in parts where we didn't, but at the end of the season they had more than we had and it was really decisive with little goals here and there.
“They deserved it, 100 per cent, but if we come to the same situation again, I don't know [who wins].
“But learning from your own mistakes or success is the best thing you can do and so far, it looks like we have taken the right information out of our situation last year and tried to make the next step.”
Liverpool finished last season one point drift of champions City, but are already five clear of the Blues in 2019-20 after enjoying a faultless opening to their campaign and extending a run of successive wins in the English top-flight to 15.