Chris Sutton has admitted he ‘felt deflated’ when Liverpool dropped points against Luton on Sunday because he wants ‘there to be a title race’.
The Reds currently find themselves three points adrift of league leaders Manchester City after 11 games following their 1-1 draw at Kenilworth Road.
Speaking after the game ex-Red Jamie Carragher claimed Jurgen Klopp’s side ‘are not ready’ to win the Premier League this season but Sutton has claimed the Anfield outfit will challenge Pep Guardiola’s side this term.
“Do I think Liverpool will win the league? No, I don’t think Liverpool will win the league. Do I think that they can really put a challenge in on Manchester City? Yes, so I don’t know why Jamie Carragher has written them off as such,” Sutton told the Daily Mail’s It’s All Kicking Off! podcast (via Liverpool Echo).
Luton took the lead through a Tahith Chong strike 10 minutes from time before second half substitute Luis Diaz equalised for the Reds with a brilliant header in added time.
Liverpool missed a number of chances while the game was still goalless, including a shocking miss from Darwin Nunez, and Sutton believes ‘it’s moments like that’ which could cost Klopp’s side at the end of the season.
“As well as Luton played and they did play well, really resilient, Liverpool still missed a lot of chances – big chances,” he added. “Jota had the one in the first half where he tried to beat the keeper and his near post though the the easier option would have been to just to go across the goalkeeper into the far corner.
“But your mate Darwin, Darwin Nunez. A player I think who we both like, he scored a brilliant goal didn’t he, against Bournemouth. I mean, an unbelievable goal. And then he goes from that to that miss…
“And it’s moments like that if you want to challenge Manchester City… I felt, I’m not a Liverpool fan and I have nothing against Luton but I felt deflated a little bit because you want there to be a title race.
“Every time Liverpool drop points… you know, we’ve got Arsenal fanboys on the production here who are desperate for Arsenal to win the league and maybe that was some of (Mikel) Arteta’s frustration that they know they can’t keep dropping points with Manchester City.”
Our record against the bottom teams cost us massively last term and it’s imperative that we improve our record this time around if we’re to have any hope of challenging for the title and returning to the Champions League.
Luton deserve credit for the effort they put in and their ability to stick to their game plan but we had numerous chances to take the lead but simply weren’t clinical enough.
We travel to Toulouse on Thursday in the Europa League before welcoming Brentford to Anfield this weekend where we’ll hope to get back to winning ways.
Manchester, known for its recent dominance in the English Premier League under the ownership of the City Football Group . The club’s modern success has been built on substantial investment in top-tier talent and a state-of-the-art stadium, the Etihad Stadium.