Jamie Carragher believes that Liverpool can still challenge for the Premier League title this season despite a far from convincing start to the campaign for Jurgen Klopp’s side.
The Reds have won just two of their opening six league games this season and currently find themselves eight points behind last seasons champions Manchester City (who’ve now played one more game than Liverpool).
The Anfield outfit returned to winning ways on Tuesday when they defeated Ajax in the Champions League but ex-Red Carragher has warned that victory doesn’t necessarily mean his former side have turned a corner.
“They can still challenge for the Premier League, no doubt,” Carragher told Sportsmail.
“But in terms of turning a corner it needs more than one game. There have been five or six games where Liverpool have been nowhere near their best.
“[Against Ajax] there was a typical Jurgen Klopp Liverpool performance, but I think they will need more than one game.
“You need to see the next four or five games to see if Liverpool are back on track. But it was nice to see Liverpool back to their best.”
There was a major improvement in our performance against the Dutch outfit compared to our display against Napoli a week earlier.
We were dominated all over the pitch in Naples and many of Klopp’s players looked dis-interested.
Against Ajax, however, our hunger to win the ball back when we lost it had returned and we controlled the game for the majority of the night despite needing a late Joel Matip winner in front of The Kop.
Backing up that result is now our next task but, rather frustratingly, we’re not in action again now until October 1 when we welcome Brighton to Anfield.
It would’ve been good to try and build some sort of rhythm before the international break but our clash with Chelsea today has of course been postponed due to preparations for the Queen’s funeral in London on Monday.
Manchester City, the side that are expected to win their third straight league title this season, are looking strong and with Erling Haaland finding the back of the net with such regularity, they’re going to be hard to stop.
We just need to focus on ourselves for now, though, and the rest will take care of itself across the season.
After this weekend’s round of fixtures the players will head off onto international break.
Hopefully all of our lads that have been selected by their respective countries can return to Merseyside fully fit to give us the best possible chance of putting together a decent run of results before the Qatar World Cup begins in November.
The post Jamie Carragher weighs in on Liverpool’s title hopes and claims the Reds were ‘back to their best’ against Ajax appeared first on The Empire of The Kop.
