The Premier League title race has been thrown open after Manchester City drew with Crystal Palace on Monday, March 14. This means that all second-placed Liverpool need to do to go a point behind City is to beat Arsenal on Wednesday, March 16.
Recall that Manchester City went into the Premier League game against Crystal Palace with four points lead over Liverpool. Coach Pep Guardiola of City and his boys were expected to beat Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park Stadium to maintain their three points lead. However, all City could get from the game was just a point.
During the game, Manchester City recorded a whopping 74 percent of the ball possession, 18 shots, four of which were on target, and 86 percent pass accuracy. Despite having all these stats in their favor, the game ended in a 0-0 draw.
The draw left Manchester City with 70 points in 29 games, after recording 22 wins, four draws, and three defeats. They are still maintaining their four points lead over Liverpool pending the outcome of Liverpool’s league game against Arsenal.
Pep Guardiola reacts as the Premier League title race between Manchester City and Liverpool gets tougher
After the 0-0 draw between Manchester City and Crystal Palace on Monday, coach Pep Guardiola praised the host for preventing Manchester City from winning the game.
Pep Guardiola and Vicente Guaita having a heated conversation at full-time 👀 pic.twitter.com/bwjaTtVt4G
— Football Daily (@footballdaily) March 14, 2022
The Spanish tactician insisted that there are ten more Premier League games to play before the season ends which could change a lot in the title race. Guardiola added that he does not need to draw with Crystal Palace to know how difficult it is to win the Premier League title.
“There’s still nine games and a lot of points,” Guardiola said. “In general, we did a really good game. We have five or six days before we play in the FA Cup against Southampton but there is little to say to them. We did everything we could to win today. It was an incredible effort from Crystal Palace who played very well.
“Now we have four points [clear at the top] and one game more. In the international break, we are still going to be leaders and we play to win. It was difficult to control the physicality they had and we had a lot of chances to win but we couldn’t score.
“I thought about making changes, but they were playing well. The guys could score goals but, in the end, with the emotion and their people, we couldn’t.
“We created more, conceded few, the stats are there. The way we played was amazing in a difficult stadium where the grass was not perfect. We had a good game. We have to win a lot of games. I have no regrets about how we played.
“We don’t need to draw here to know it [how tough it is to win the Premier League].”
🗣 "We played a really really good game."
— Football Daily (@footballdaily) March 14, 2022
Pep Guardiola says he has no regrets with the way Manchester City played against Crystal Palace pic.twitter.com/ohUmRg33Xc
Liverpool’s league game against Arsenal could be a title decider
The 2021-2022 Premier League season has moved to that stage where every league game could be a title decider. That trend will officially start with Liverpool when they take on Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium on Wednesday.
The Premier League game which is scheduled to kick off at 21:15 can make or mar Liverpool’s chances of overtaking first-placed Manchester City.
Unfortunately for coach Jurgen Klopp of Liverpool and his boys, they will face an Arsenal team that has been very consistent in recent weeks. An Arsenal’s renewed form has pushed the club back to the top four despite playing three games lesser than 5th placed Manchester United.
The fact that coach Mikel Arteta of Arsenal and his boys are just a point above Manchester United could push them to put up a fight with Liverpool that Klopp might not be able to handle.
If that manages to happen, it will be a bad omen to Liverpool’s drive to win their second Premier League title in three seasons.
The fact that Arsenal have conceded 29 goals and scored 43 goals so far in the ongoing Premier League campaign showed that the likelihood of conceding a goal during league matches is relatively high.
Unfortunately for them, they are going against Liverpool which have been the best scoring side in this season’s Premier League campaign. The second-placed team has scored 73 goals and conceded just 20 goals so far in the league. Based on this record, the tendency of Liverpool to score a goal is higher than the club’s tendency of conceding a goal.
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