Pep Guardiola has suggested he “believes more” in Liverpool challenging Manchester City for the title than Jurgen Klopp.
The Reds suffered a disappointing loss to Nottingham Forest on Saturday and are currently seventh in the table, while the Sky Blues beat Brighton 3-1 at the Etihad and are now 10 points clear of the FA Cup holders.
Klopp ruled Liverpool out of the title race earlier this month after they were beaten by Arsenal, but Guardiola recently insisted the Merseysiders remain City’s biggest title contenders, something he amplified after Klopp’s win. your team yesterday.
“It seems that with my statement I believe more in the Liverpool team than in its manager,” the Spaniard said (quoted by Express). “Only 10 games to go, the World Cup in between and a lot of games to play, Europe involved and cup competitions involved, injuries involved. I said before when we have six or seven games left, yes. When it’s only 10 games, a billion things can happen.”
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After our slow start to the campaign, there won’t be many Liverpool fans who really feel we can still challenge for the title, but it’s still early days.
Arsenal, who currently hold a 1-0 lead at Southampton (at the time of writing), look very strong and will be 14 points clear of us if they hold out for victory at St. Mary’s.
We don’t look entirely convincing defensively this season and with the likes of Diogo Jota and Luis Diaz facing long spells on the sidelines with injuries, our attacking threat has also been hampered.
It’s a canny attempt to push Klopp on Guardiola’s part and it looks like it continues the antics we saw from him on the touchline at Anfield last week.
We just have to take each game as it comes at the moment: many thought our win over City last week was the much-needed kick-off to our campaign, but it seems we are now back where we started.
The next step is Ajax, where we have three players who were playing yesterday again in contention to appear: a point in Amsterdam will see us advance to the knockout stages of the Champions League.
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