Gary Neville has given Liverpool and Chelsea hope of catching Manchester City and says he ‘expects’ the title race to ‘get close’ towards the end of the campaign.
Defending champions City are nine points clear at the top of the table ahead of the mid-season break, having won 18 of their 23 games this season and 12 in a row before the 1-1 draw at Southampton.
While Pep Guardiola’s side have enjoyed a good run over the past two months, both Liverpool and Chelsea dropped points, with the Reds losing to Leicester City and the Blues failing to beat clubs like Brighton and Everton.
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‘I think Liverpool are doing really well without two of their main players [Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane],’ Neville said on his Sky Sports podcast.
‘Things like [City’s 1-1 draw at Southampton] give a little bit of encouragement. City are a machine and you don’t expect them to make a lot of mistakes – but they could, and Liverpool and Chelsea have got to believe that.
‘I’m not that disappointed in Liverpool because I think they have to be at full pelt all the time to get to City just because they haven’t got the squad that City have got.
‘But I do think Chelsea have [the squad] and I expect it to get close. I don’t expect this runaway league; five weeks ago, we expected this three-horse race and we’ve almost been pushed into a feeling that City have won it.
‘I don’t think we have got the three-horse race back this weekend through the fact that Chelsea and Liverpool have won and City have drawn, but I don’t think we are going to have that runaway 20-point championship that we have had sometimes with City.
‘It can happen. Liverpool have got it in them if they can keep that 11 together and get Sadio Mane and Mo Salah back flying, but this squad that Chelsea have got, if they can get Lukaku absolutely buzzing, bashing people around, backing into them and rolling them like he did in that last half-an-hour [in the 2-0 defeat of Tottenham], and starting to put the ball in the back of the net – there’s so many inventive players you could play around him – so if they can just hit form between them, they can play three games a week because they can change two players every game and not really have a dip.
‘Whether it’s Pulisic and Werner or Ziyech and Mount, you don’t see a massive dip in terms of quality when one plays or the other.
‘If Thomas Tuchel can keep them all happy, I think they can have a really strong finish to the season, I really do.
‘I think the quality in the Premier League this season is outstanding and it doesn’t deserve to have someone winning it by 15 points.’
With Man City’s winning run ended by Southampton, it was needed that Liverpool and Chelsea took advantage and they managed to close the gap with wins over Crystal Palace and Tottenham respectively.
Asked if his Liverpool team sent a message to City with their win at Selhurst Park, Jurgen Klopp said: ‘No. The distance is too far to talk about it but we don’t have to.
‘We just need to win football matches. We will see what happens in the final few months.’
Thomas Tuchel also played down Chelsea’s title chances after the 2-0 victory against Tottenham at Stamford Bridge.
‘The table is the table, it is our responsibility to prove ourselves every third day and now we have a break and it was important to go into this break with a performance we want,’ he said.
‘We needed this but needed also to do things better. The guys are very tired because it was a long run for us.’
