Klopp smiled as he said Liverpool would target 100 points to win the title but his side are on course after a blistering startWhen Liverpool missed out on the title by a single point last season it was being said with a mixture of amusement and admiration around Anfield that Manchester City had raised the bar so high it was going to take a century of points to be sure of winning the Premier League.It seemed somehow ludicrous that a side could reach 97 points and still miss out on the league championship, when totals as low as 75 and 78 had sufficed in the past and no previous runner-up had gone beyond 90. Pep Guardiola, finding himself having to...
Leicester and Chelsea managers have set out their stall with attractive football thanks to the likes of Maddison and PulisicGareth Southgate was probably right to play down the significance of last weekends Liverpool v Manchester City showdown from an England point of view. Only three members of his present squad played at Anfield and featured in the starting lineup against Montenegro, even if one more came on as a substitute, and as the England manager pointed out there might have been double that number in times gone by.Yet despite most predictions, the Premier League is not turning out to be quite the two-horse race originally envisaged. Leicester City and Chelsea stand between the leaders and the defending champions, and by...
Emery’s Arsenal have lost their direction and Spurs’ problems start at full-back but Burnley’s Dwight McNeil is on songRiyad Mahrez impressed only in spells during his first season at Manchester City but, with Leroy Sané felled by a cruciate injury in August’s Community Shield victory, the onus was on the £60m man to step up. An imperious performance at West Ham on the opening day of the season suggested he would do exactly that, yet he has started only four league games since – two of those being defeats – and with his side desperate for goals in a critical game at Anfield he was not called on at all. Mahrez remains a magical player on his day but the...
Victory over Arsenal keeps Foxes in title hunt and shows how manager has brought light back into a club struck by tragedyIn a side room at the King Power Stadium, Brendan Rodgers was allowing himself to reflect. Only eight and a half months had passed since he joined Leicester City but the 90 minutes everyone had just witnessed felt among the most significant of that time. Leicester had just outmanoeuvred Arsenal, their claim to a Champions League spot looking increasingly hard to resist, and the atmosphere around the stadium bore resemblance to the near-disbelieving euphoria that helped sweep them to the title in 2016.“I felt the opportunity to hook into an emotion here for a number of reasons,” Rodgers said....
Liverpool’s resilience faces biggest test, Vardy threatens to deepen Arsenal’s gloom and a welcome dilemma for NewcastleApparently there is a game going on in Liverpool on Sunday. Liverpool’s 2-1 win over Genk in midweek was very much a continuation of a theme – since mid-September they have also beaten Chelsea, Leicester, Tottenham and Aston Villa by the same scoreline, and they last won a league game by more than one goal at home to Newcastle on 14 September. In their last six league games they have a goal difference of only five, yet they have somehow converted that into a mathematically maximal 16 points. The day Liverpool beat Newcastle was also when Manchester City lost at Norwich, but since then...