Rebecca Lowe has refused to count Liverpool out of the Premier League title race despite suffering a fifth top-flight defeat out of six on Sunday.
The defending champions were beaten 3-0 at Manchester City and dropped to eighth in the table after matchweek 11, with the Reds now the same number of points away from leaders Arsenal (eight) as they are from West Ham in the relegation zone.
Roy Keane has dismissed Arne Slot’s side as contenders to lift the trophy again in six months’ time after yesterday’s result, but not everyone believes that LFC are too far back to retrieve the current deficit on the Gunners.
Lowe isn’t ruling Liverpool out of Premier League title race
On The LoweDown on NBC Sports on Sunday night, Tim Howard asked Lowe if she thinks that a second successive Premier League title is now beyond Liverpool after their latest setback.
She replied: “Both of you [Howard and Robbie Earle] said on air that you think they’re out of the title race; I don’t. I know they’re eighth, I know they’ve lost five of their last six, and I know they’ve had a weird season winning six and losing five, but they’re only eight points away and it’s only November.
“I don’t think they’re going to win it, but I don’t think they’re out of the title race. I think they might make some sort of half-effort to claw some of that back. I just don’t think I can say on 9th November that Liverpool are out of the title race. I can’t say it.”
Virgil van Dijk cuts a frustrated figure after Liverpool's defeat to Manchester City
(Photo by Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Eight points isn’t too far back, but Liverpool can’t fall much further behind
Lowe’s opinion is similar to the one aired by Arsene Wenger prior to yesterday’s match, with the ex-Arsenal manager also highlighting that November is much too early to be dismissing Liverpool from title race contention.
Eight points is retrievable at this stage of the season, and the winter months can often see a seismic shift in momentum for teams who’ve had either an unexpectedly good or bad first third of the campaign.
The xG figures from the Man City game indicate that the final score of 3-0 was harsh on the Reds, even if there was no denying that Pep Guardiola’s team wholly deserved to win, and the levels we reached in the wins over Aston Villa and Real Madrid showed how excellent this team can be when at their best.
Unfortunately, we’ve been nowhere near our best for much of the season so far, even in the early weeks when we were consistently winning, and there’s a danger that the current eight-point gap to Arsenal could become an insurmountable double-digit chasm by Christmas.
Right now it’s difficult to make a case for Liverpool retaining the Premier League title, but if they can put together a string of victories after the international break and close the deficit to the Gunners, they could yet nudge their way back into genuine contention.
You can watch Slot’s full post-Man City press conference via Empire of the Kop on YouTube: