Liverpool will seek to once again go toe-to-toe with Manchester City this season at the summit of the Premier League. But a former employee has quipped that it's going to be an uphill battle.
These days, of course, Arsenal also has to be factored into the title race, while there's a huge unknown about how Arne Slot will get on after replacing Jurgen Klopp in the Anfield dugout. But Dr. Ian Graham has joked that all of this is insignificant compared to one crucial factor.
Graham has written a book titled How to Win the Premier League. So Sky Sports quizzed him on that very question, and he referenced Manchester City in his answer.
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"The best guarantee of winning the Premier League is to make sure you work for Manchester City," remarked Graham, who earned a doctorate at Cambridge in the field of theoretical physics before joining Liverpool. "They're an outstanding team and it's incredibly difficult to win the Premier League if you're anyone other than Manchester City."
Graham is famous for working with the numbers, and you can't fault his logic on this one — Manchester City has won each of the last four Premier League titles. But Liverpool is the only reason that figure does not stand at seven.
That makes Graham's more serious analysis of how to win the Premier League an interesting topic. He, after all, was part of a team that achieved the goal against stacked odds.
For his full answer, you'll have to read the book. But he did offer Sky Sports a slightly more straight-faced analysis:
"To be more serious about it, it takes a lot of time and effort, some investment as well," Graham said. "Building a squad with a chance of winning the title is a process that needs to take several years.
"We did that at Liverpool, you see Arsenal have done something similar now. So they're now in with a much higher chance than a few years ago."
Liverpool is yet to make any further investments this summer, but Slot will be banking on the idea that the foundations for the next title-winning team at Anfield have already been laid. There's no denying the exciting young core of talent — but as ever, they face the not insignificant hurdle of overcoming Manchester City.
Liverpool.com says: Hopefully Slot has been rifling through Graham's book ahead of the first match of the season! He will certainly be going into the campaign with the goal of winning the Premier League, and time will tell whether the squad is up to matching those ambitions.
The Manchester City quip was made in jest, but there's no denying that the Premier League has become what it once scorned. Pep Guardiola's side has almost achieved the dominance of a Bayern Munich or a PSG, and it really is a huge challenge for anyone else to emerge on top.
