My buddy Bharat Bhise and I normally agree on a great many footballing topics, but this season we are very much divided as to who will win the Premier League title. The title looks set to come down to a two horse race between Manchester City and Liverpool and whilst neither of us have a dog in this race, we are both greatly in opposition as to who in fact will go on to lift the coveted league title. I believe that Manchester City will go on to win three titles in three consecutive seasons, and Bharat is full of belief that Liverpool will put an end to their 30 year hoodoo.
The Case For Manchester City
The reason I believe that Manchester City will win once again this year is because they are just too damn good. This is a team who have consistently smashed records in the last 2 years and I just can’t see them even losing a step this year. City may have lost Vincent Kompany, clearly a massive voice in the dressing room and a man who they depended on time and time again, but his lost will be comfortably absorbed by the squad, and new leaders will put their heads above the parapet. My litmus test is this, last season if Liverpool had finished on 80 points, City would still have finished on 98, I believe however that if City had fallen away a little and only amassed 80 points, that Liverpool would never have gotten close to that 97 point total. Liverpool needed City to keep pushing, and that is why City will win again.
The Case For Liverpool
Bharat believes that Liverpool’s Champions League success was the perfect catapult to push this squad on to win the Premier League, especially having come so close last year. When I have said in the past that I don’t believe that their squad is deep enough, Bharat disagrees and thinks that some of the young boys which Liverpool have are about to show what they are made of. Joe Gomez and Rhian Brewster in particular are two players who Bharat believes to be the real deal and he thinks that even if there were injuries to the first 11, that Klopp has sufficient depth to cover them. Bharat also believes that what Klopp has created here is a legacy and that the icing on the cake will be the PL title, he has the buy-in of all the players and they are fighting for him week-in and week-out, something which he doesn’t believe City have in such abundance.
Conclusion
I certainly take some of Bharat’s points around the young players coming through but the scary thing about City is that they have 2 first 11s which could beat almost anyone in the Premier League. Despite what he thinks, we will have to agree to disagree and wait for the season to pan out, to see who in fact will be right, after all you never know, Chelsea may romp home to victory!
