Is the race for the Premier League title just between two horses? Are Tottenham good enough or consistent enough to be considered contenders? What about Chelsea, United and the other London failures Arsenal?
Here we take a look at the current top three with more to follow another time.
Liverpool
Having managed to achieve the lofty status, (somehow), of league leaders, Klopp’s merry men need to guard against complacency. Why, you may wonder, would they get complacent at this stage of the season when they are in their best ever position to win the Premier League title? Well, they have only been convincing when winning a few games, they have had to rely on large slices of luck in most of the others and have yet to suffer any serious injuries to their better players.
The complacency may arise if they are expecting their good fortune to continue, unabated, throughout the remainder of the season. At some stage they will suffer a blip and we don’t mean dropping points at home to Leicester! They will lose more games which means they will drop more points and, with City already having had their blip, this means they will be caught.
In truth though, after all this time in the wilderness, second place would be no mean feat for Liverpool and something which Jürgen Klopp is becoming very used to in other competitions.
Manchester City
City have now lost four games this season and it is highly unlikely that they will lose many, if any, more. They sit three points behind Liverpool but this is ground which can easily be made up.
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They are firing on all cylinders again and looking back to their best form which saw them declared pre-season favourites to win most of the trophies for which they are competing.
With favourable draws in the Champion’s League and the FA Cup, they can be expected to progress in both tournaments and, with the final of the Carabao Cup against Chelsea in the near future, their only enemy is their potential success which denies them rest and breaks from competitive games.
Liverpool, as usual, have no such problems and will only be looking to compete in the Champion’s League and it is the fact that they could have considerably less games than City which will give them hope. It is a forlorn hope but it will still spring eternal on Merseyside.
Tottenham Hotspur
Mauricio Pochettino may be in line to take over at Manchester United but it is unlikely he will do so if he ends this season having won less than the current incumbent.
His squad is too thin and his refusal to admit this to the Spurs fans is rather strange. We all know Daniel Levy doesn’t want to spend any money, he never does but for his manager to say that everything is fine, even going to the extremes of saying that winning trophies is for egotists, will not have gone down well with the Wembley faithful who may, one day, become the White Hart Lane faithful again.
They were also words which won’t have done him any favours if he does wish to become the next manager of Manchester United, a club where silverware is almost required as part of the furniture.
Because of the size of squad, the lack of ambition in the manager and the bland acceptance of everything Daniel Levy dictates, Spurs will finish the season where they deserve to be which will be outside of the top two and possibly even outside of the top three. (This, of course, will be deemed a success by Pochettino because it isn’t a trophy)!
So that is the opinion on three of the big six. In the next exciting instalment we will look at the fortunes of the other three so stay tuned and we will be back soon.
WHY SAY ANYTHING? 