A lot of the chat around the Premier League title race has presupposed since the summer that it will, at some point, boil down to Manchester City vs Arsenal.
There’s good reason for that: they have been rivals to lift the trophy for the past two seasons, with Arsenal getting stronger and stronger under Mikel Arteta. Seven games into the season, both remain unbeaten with five wins and seven points, having shared a dramatic 2-2 draw already.
Only neither City nor Arsenal are currently top of the table. That honour currently belongs to Liverpool – and over the next few weeks, we will find out whether that assessment was correct, or whether Liverpool should be well and truly inserted into conversation as legitimate title contenders.
Arne Slot set for extended litmus test of Liverpool's level
The title race looked to be a three-way for much of last season, of course: at the beginning of April they sat top of the table, two points ahead of Arsenal and three ahead of City, with just eight league games left to play. They had already won the League Cup and were hopeful of adding the Europa League to it.
Then the wheels came off. Having dropped just 20 points in their first 30 games, Liverpool dropped 12 in the final run-in, including a home defeat to Crystal Palace and a derby defeat away to troubled Everton.
In Europe, Liverpool were utterly humbled at home to Atalanta to go out at the quarter-final stage. Manchester United had already dumped them out of the FA Cup. What was meant to be a glorious farewell for Jurgen Klopp ended with him finishing as quietly as he was ever likely to.
Their general sense of vulnerability and inconsistency – not helped by significant injury problems last season – meant that the general expectation going into the summer was that Liverpool would have a respectable transitional season under the new management of Arne Slot.
It would surely take a bit of time for Liverpool to get used to the Dutchman’s style, as well as bedding in new signings from what could be a summer of overhaul. Neither of those things have happened.
In spite of - or perhaps because of - their quiet summer transfer window, this is a different-looking Liverpool: less flesh, more organised, more consistent. They have lost just one game in all competitions, won all the rest, and conceded just four goals in ten games.
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The big asterisk next to Liverpool’s name – and at least part of the reason they still lag a little way behind neck-and-neck City and Arsenal in the bookies odds for the title – is that they have enjoyed a relatively kind initial fixture list. Go off the league table going into this weekend’s fixtures, and tenth-placed Nottingham Forest are the highest-ranked team they have faced so far – and they lost at home to them.
That’s about to change, big time. Liverpool will host fourth-placed Chelsea on Sunday in their biggest test yet of their defensive prowess, followed by a trip to Arsenal next weekend, visits from Brighton and Aston Villa – to say nothing of their commitments in the League Cup and Champions League.
On the other side of the November international break, they have the relative respite of a trip to Southampton, followed by a punishing run of four games in 11 days against Real Madrid, Manchester City, Newcastle and Everton.
The Chelsea game will give us our first real indication – in the league, at least – of what level Liverpool are actually at this season. And without Alisson, at that.
There are cautionary tales for Liverpool about not getting too carried away. This time last year, Tottenham were top of the table and unbeaten; they won their next two, then didn't win again until mid-December and finished fifth.
This time two years ago, Arsenal sat four points clear of Manchester City at the top of the table. They ended the season five points behind their new rivals.
Then-reigning champions Liverpool were top of the table after seven games in 2020/21, too, after a weird start to the season that had Leicester second, Everton fourth and Southampton fifth. Then Klopp's side started drawing too many games, then losing with alarming regularity; they finished third, 17 points behind new champions City.
Nobody ever sings songs about having been top of the table in mid-October. Are they the real deal, there to stay at the top end of the table for the long haul? Or are their ambitions limited to being the best of the rest once more?
