With the Premier League title race hotting up over the weekend, five-time English first division winner Graeme Souness has given his verdict.
Champions Manchester City slipped up in a frantic 3-3 draw with Tottenham, while Liverpool came out on top in a similarly bonkers 4-3 win over Fulham.
Meanwhile, Arsenal stayed top of the league with a nervy 2-1 home win over Wolves.
That trio seem to be the likely contenders when it comes to the end of the season, but City in particular are under the microscope due to their lack of control against Spurs.
Souness, though, isn’t ready too much into a single game, as he told talkSPORT.
“I think you’d be a fool to talk about Man City’s frailties,” he said. “They are a proper team with great footballers and serial winners.
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“What great players and great teams do is, they react to disappointment. We’re not even at Christmas and they’re sitting third in the table.
“For me, they’re still the favourites, but I’ve got a sneaky feeling about my old team [Liverpool]. I said at the start of the season you’re going to have to finish in front of Liverpool to win the Premier League.
“The reason I think that is Liverpool have lots of goals in their team and if you’ve got lots of goals in your team it means you can win games without being at your best.”
Champions City were five points better off at this stage last season, and are having to play the majority of 2023/24 without talismanic captain Kevin De Bruyne.
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There have been some uncharacteristically uncontrolled performances both domestically and in Europe, but Souness doesn’t agree with Gary Neville that it’s come from complacency.
“City, yeah they’re conceding goals that they wouldn’t normally, and they’re missing their best player over the last five or six years, De Bruyne and he’s going to come back,” he said.
“If there’s any criticism of them, it’s that they’re not playing at the same intensity. We were talking about Sheffield United before; at that end of the league where half a yard is the difference, and I would suggest that’s the same as City right now.
“Whether that’s the Champions League games or for whatever reason, they’re half a yard from where they are normally when it comes to pressing, passing, getting shots off, being aggressive, but you’d be a fool to write them off.
“You can’t call it complacency because they’ve got a manager who won’t allow that to happen, and the reason for that is, apart from his actions and what comes out of his mouth, they have such a strong squad that they can rotate.
“He’s made the players in the dressing room feel like this: I was captain of Liverpool and Scotland when there were only two subs allowed. I know if I had two or three indifferent games they’d be looking at me very closely, captain or not captain, and Man City have that right now.
“He can say to anyone: ‘if you’re not at it we have someone who is at it and you’ll have to sit and watch for a few weeks’.”
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