Jürgen Klopp says he was “not worried for one second” about Mohamed Salah’s form this season but admits both club and player have to learn to deal with the raised levels of expectation that mean the forward’s record-breaking haul in 2017-18 is the yardstick by which he is judged.

Klopp was speaking after Salah scored a brilliant hat-trick in Liverpool’s emphatic 4-0 victory over Bournemouth, taking his league tally for the season into double figures as Liverpool racked up a fifth straight top-flight win and supplanted Manchester City at the top of the table.

It was an exhilarating performance from Salah and prompted the question of whether Klopp smiles when he hears people asking if the 26-year-old has been quite the same player this season. The manager said: “Look, your business [the press] is a difficult one as well – you have to judge always the moment. I’m interested in the moment but I never judge it because the moment is just a little part of all what we do. So I was not for one second worried.

“We have to develop always and to confirm, or to prove again, a 41-goal season [Salah actually scored 44 goals last season]. Everybody would struggle a little bit with it. How can you prove it? If you score in the first five games 10 goals everyone would say: ‘It will happen again.’ But if you score 39, it would be: ‘Yeah, but it’s not 41.’ So we all have to learn to deal with it and of course he [Salah] has to as well. He has never had a season like that. And he wants to have the season again.”

Salah’s best performance of the season felt timely given Tuesday’s pivotal Champions League game against Napoli at Anfield, which Liverpool must win 1-0 or by two goals if they are to reach the last 16. Klopp talked about “how big the influence of Anfield can be” and called on supporters to make it a special European night. “Napoli, we were not good there, so first of all we would like to show that we are better than we played in Napoli. So we have to again ask for Anfield. We have to call Anfield and they should help us because that’s a really massive game,” he said.

Klopp had a grin on his face when it was put to him that Napoli would be fearful of Salah after his latest display. “That’s all these little mind games. [Carlo] Ancelotti’s not playing them. I’m not playing them. Nobody is really playing them,” he said. “We don’t say: ‘Oh no, look at Mo, he’ll shoot you out of the stadium,’ or whatever. It’s football and we really have to do a lot of things right to bring him in a situation where he can score.”