Speaking on The Overlap, Gary Neville has been speaking about the Premier League title race and how one injury could change everything.
Liverpool and Manchester City look to be going head to head for the title once again, and according to Neville, one injury to a Liverpool could decide who wins the league.
Neville says that if Virgil van Dijk picks up an injury, the Reds’ form would drop and City would be the champions-elect.
What’s been said?
Neville spoke about a potential injury to van Dijk.
“The one thing, I think if Liverpool got an injury to van Dijk, that would be absolutely huge. Whereas with City, I don’t think they could lose one player and the drop would be big, whereas with Liverpool, I think the drop would be huge. He had the injury last year and that’s the one thing from left-field that could throw any title race is a major injury to a major player,” Neville said.
Seen it before
Neville says that an injury to van Dijk could settle the title race, and he’s not wrong.
In fact, we’ve seen this exact scenario play out before, not once, but twice.
Van Dijk going down last season cost Liverpool massively, while injuries to Joel Matip and Joe Gomez only piled the problems higher.
However, we also mustn’t forget that Manchester City’s form dropped off a cliff back in 2019/20 after an injury to Aymeric Laporte, so as Neville says, one injury can change everything.
Fortunately for City, they now seem to have more cover in every position, but as we all should know by now, no team is immune to an injury crisis.
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