Former Arsenal star says Gunners’ title hopes will be over if they lose to Liverpool | OneFootball

Former Arsenal player Paul Merson believes Arsenal will be out of the title race if they lose to Liverpool on Sunday.

The Gunners currently sit four points behind the league leaders after eight games played having lost their first game of the season to Bournemouth on Saturday.

But despite it being so early in the season, Merson says defeat would spell the end of Arsenal’s title hopes.

He told Sky Sports: “This is a big football match, huge football match. I’ll go as far as saying if Arsenal get beat here, I think they’re out of it. I really do.

“I hope they’re thinking like I’m thinking because if they lose this, they go seven behind Liverpool. I don’t see Man City not beating Southampton. So they will be seven or six points behind the two teams that were their biggest threat at the start of the season.

“That’s a lot of points, especially the way these teams are winning football matches. They beat the lesser teams. The gulf is massive at the moment.

“I would be shocked if Arsenal lost this and went on to win the league. I would be absolutely amazed. I would be flabbergasted. They are not just chasing one team down, they are chasing two.”

Arsenal will be without the suspended William Saliba against Liverpool while Martin Odegaard, Bukayo Saka and Riccardo Calafiori are among the injury doubts for the game.

And addressing the fact it is still early in the season, he added: “I know everybody will be sitting at home and everybody will be going, oh, there are 29 games left.

“But, at the start of the season when there were 38 games left, if I had said I will have Man City and Liverpool to win the league and you can have Arsenal but you have got to give me a seven and six points head start, you would not do it in a million years.

“And you would not do it now with 29 games to go.

“So, all this about this 29 games to go, Arsenal would be out of the title for me. They would be out. I just cannot see how they would catch it up with the figures that Man City have put up over the last five or six years.”