CITY SPECIAL Pep on hunt to find his own Salah

PEP Guardiola will follow a familiar path this summer.

High on his agenda in his bid to make the best better is to add more cutting edge to team that has scored 133 goals in all competitions this season.

City need to score six more times in their final four games to break Chelsea’s Premier League record of 103 goals set in 2009-10.

But Guardiola is convinced his attack is still short.

And so he is determined to recruit a versatile forward at the end of the season - just as he has been in every transfer window since he took over at the Etihad.

It has been an obsession for the Catalan, who believes the perfect forward is much more than just a goalscorer.

You don’t have to look far to identify the player who would most comfortably fit into Guardiola’s system - Mo Salah.

The Egyptian is surely out of reach for any suitor this summer - but his blend of speed, vision, creativity, tenacity and goals is what makes him an ideal Guardiola player.

The question is whether the City manager can recruit his own answer to the PFA Player of the Year.

He has been promised the funds to sign a world-class attacker after missing out on Alexis Sanchez in January.

City opted against rivaling the financial package the Chilean was offered by United, despite Guardiola’s eagerness to add him to his attack.

But the club’s hierarchy did promise him he would have the resources to recruit an alternative.

Riyad Mahrez was the subject of a £60m deadline day move - and the Algerian remains on the Premier League champions’ radar.

He will, however, cost significantly more than the £34m Liverpool spent on Salah.

How City will wish they pursued the 25-year-old rather than Sanchez and Kylian Mbappe last summer.

But Guardiola himself admits he didn’t foresee Salah’s spectacular campaign after watching him play for Roma. His quality was not in question, but there were doubts about his wastefulness in front of goal. In Sanchez, City were targeting the finished article - a proven goal-scorer in England’s top flight. In Mbappe, they were trying to secure a player largely regarded as an heir to the thrones of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. But Salah, with 43 goals in all competitions, has proved himself a more devasting goalscorer than Sanchez ever was at Arsenal. His form this season, meanwhile, has earned serious comparisons with Messi, the PFA Player of the Year award - and put him in contention for the Balon d’Or. Add him to City’s attack this season and perhaps they would have one foot in the Champions League final rather than Liverpool. If nothing else, their quarter-final with Jurgen Klopp’s side could have gone very differently. Guardiola remains satisfied with the progress made by his own wide