We are now 12 games into the new season and not many would have thought that Liverpool would have been serious title contenders. Granted the Reds have been one of the strongest sides of the past six years but when someone like Jurgen Klopp leaves their post and a new untested manager comes into such a competitive league a period of adjustment is normally afforded. One could suspect that even had Liverpool finished as low as 6th that they would not have been too harshly judged this season. The task for Arne Slot was evident. How do I win the fans over? How do I make the correct choices in bringing in new players? How do I make a quick bonding relationship with veteran players who saw Klopp as a God? But here we are almost a third of the season in and his team have lost just one game and are 8 points clear of 2nd place. This weekend Liverpool will face the 2nd placed team, the champions Manchester City and if they win that perhaps we can feel that City will not be winning five titles in a row. Liverpool have a talented squad and going into that crunch game they will be the favourites. Mohamed Salah is one player to keep your eye on. It seemed almost certain even 18 months ago that he may opt to quit the club for ventures in the Saudi League or even the MLS in America. Salah was doing well but perhaps not as great as he should have been doing, his body language seemed to say I'd rather be elsewhere. And yet Salah seems a player reborn under the guidance of Slot, so much so that currently he should be recognised as the best player in the Premier League so far. No player can match his stats, and he has contributed to 16 goals so far. Liverpool have scored 24, so he has been involved in almost 70% of their goals and has scored 10 and assisted in six.
One club who could pose a threat to Liverpool may not be Manchester City but Chelsea. The Blues have been the butt of many a joke over the past two seasons given their fall from grace after winning the Champions League in 2021. Since then hundreds of millions if not billions have been spent on the club and managers and even the owner has come and gone, all to no avail. However under Enzo Maresca there has been a shift and the club are looking stronger and growing in confidence week by week. Chelsea have popped up in 3rd place and are just a point behind City and nine behind Liverpool but if they can find consistency in winning games and go on a good run with the large squad they have and no European football the Blues could be a surprise contender for this season. And what of Manchester City? City are experiencing what Liverpool did a couple of seasons back and in fact under Klopp where most of his tenure was brilliant the club did have two nightmarish spells under the German where they couldn't buy a win. It is incredible to think that City have gone six games now in all competitions without a win. In their latest Premier League game they were throttled 4-0 at home to Tottenham who had just lost at home to Ipswich. That's the strength of the Premier League for you. But for City this also must be a psychological issue. In midweek in the Champions League they were winning 3-0 at home to Feyenoord and ending up drawing 3-3, no loss but it would have felt like one and in a sense this result has been the worst of the lot. In recent defeats City looked like getting beat and couldn't come back, in this latest European game they looked home and dry and still couldn't win. One would have thought after Guardiola signed an extension to his contract that all would be fine going forward but problems remain. Rodri is a huge miss but one has to wonder if Guardiola has made two fatal errors in letting Cole Palmer and Julien Alvarez leave the club?
Steve Cooper has been sacked as manager of Leicester after just 5 months in charge. The Foxes have struggled this season but so have all three newly promoted sides who currently make up the bottom five. For now Leicester are safe and are in 16th place with 10 points but are just one point ahead of the relegation zone. Was it fair to sack Cooper? In a sense this is a difficult question as he was so early into his career with the club a win rate of 20% is unacceptable but perhaps with additional signings in January Cooper may well have turned some club fortunes around and they may well have finished comfortable in mid-table. Of course the club could have been equally relegated with him in charge. What Leicester have done is thrown down the gauntlet and gambled early on in the season that a replacement will be able to take what the team has and make better of it, and it could be a risk worth going for. We all like to see managers have more time but Cooper on the evidence of what we have seen so far did not seem like he was going to progress with the club, if he ever was we'll never know anyway. Ruud Van Nistelrooy seems nailed on to get the job after his assistant stint with Manchester United and if he does so it will be very interesting to see how that works out for the Dutchman.
Next Leicester manager: Ruud Van Nistelrooy 1.15, Carlos Coberan 9.00, Graham Potter 11.00, David Moyes 12.00, Lee Carsley 21.00
© Copyright topfootballtipster.com 2019
