‘It’s a strange season’ – Gary Neville hints at Premier League title battle between London rivals | OneFootball

Given how little pre-season every club had Europe-wide, we are seeing some strange looking league tables at present.

Barcelona down in the lower half of La Liga and Manchester City also in 13th position in the Premier League are two hugely surprising stats that spring readily to mind.

It’s because of the poor form of the latter that Sky Sports pundit, Gary Neville, has revised who he expects to be contesting the Premier League title in 2020/21.

“We’re excited about the Chelsea-Tottenham game next Sunday,” he said on his latest Sky Sports podcast, cited by the Daily Mirror.

“It’s an interesting season. We thought Chelsea would be interesting at the start of the season because they invested big, young, and quite exciting as well.

“Is it a season where Frank Lampard and Jose Mourinho could be up against each other in a title race? We’d never have thought it.

“We thought it would just be a two-horse race (Liverpool and Man City). I have to say that having watched City in the first few weeks of the season, I thought Liverpool would run away with it, but not now, not with the Van Dijk injury.”

A lack of a full pre-season could be partly to blame for the topsy-turvy nature of this campaign, but each team has the same playing field.

In Tottenham’s case, they’ve had to play more games because of Europa League qualifying too.

Jose Mourinho certainly knows how to get the best out of a team challenging for the title as he’s shown on many occasions before, and if injuries continue to decimate Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, perhaps the Special One and his former pupil will be fighting it out at the business end.