Former Liverpool boss Rafael Benitez will return to Anfield once again this afternoon as his Newcastle side take on Premier League leaders Liverpool as we reach the halfway point of the season.
Rafa, who famously won the Champions League with the Reds back in 2005 was coy on whether Liverpool could win the title, but said it was between them and Man City this season:
“Still it’s too soon, but I think both teams are a little bit ahead of the others. I haven’t seen the Manchester City game, but nobody was expecting that.
“But as I’ve said before, Crystal Palace, the three up front, you can buy them for £50million, each one, so it sometimes can happen when teams have good players to play on the counter-attack.
“But still I can see Liverpool, I can see Manchester City ahead of the others. Liverpool are in form, they are doing really well and it will be a very difficult game for us.”
He was then asked which team was better by a journalist, the Liverpool team he managed in 2005, or this one managed by Jurgen Klopp in 2018. He said:
“It’s difficult to say ‘team’ because always in my head is that when we beat Real Madrid and Barcelona, there was a great team, but what I think is they have the best squad.
“When you spend money, you bring in better players – they have signed Fabinho, spent some money on Keita, but they kept Henderson and they kept Wijnaldum, so you keep the good players and you bring in new players, so the squad is better.
“What does that mean? That in different competitions, different games, still you have a strong team on the pitch.”
Liverpool will still be top of the league, even if they lose today, with Man City four points behind. Both sides are playing at 3pm and we could see some serious rotation by both managers in this extremely busy period.