The Prem, is it a Top4 or Top3,

[Vermilion]

Listening to general football chat on all mediums, it seems most neutral fans consider the Prem to have a top 3 & not a top 4 as us Red's would like to think, only REALISTICALLY 3 teams that can win the League every one say's. On reflection ok i suppose they have a point, although i still believe we could nick 1 under Rafa & the present regime's level of spending power. But will we truly be contenders year on year & be considered a match on the pitch for the BIG spenders. Hopefuly a full 70 thousand seater each week would fund the sort of quality needed to achieve this, so long as H&G release the new found revenue to the manager, or atleast a chunk of it. My worry is that it seems an awful long way away, long enough for our leagues won tally to be overtaken by a team. We need to be proper contenders....soon. OR...is everything just ticking along nicely, see what happen's, have faith.

[dww]

Depends on how you want to look at it really. In terms of teams who will year in year out compete for CL football and other honours it is clearly a top 4. If you are talking about recent league success then it is a top two of Manchester United and Chelsea. If you want to talk about most likely to compete for the league this year I would say that it looks most likely it is a top two of Arsenal and United.

Averaging the last two makes it pretty clear that the other sides in the top four are achieving more than we are in the league and so could reasonably be defined as a top 3 which if we could expand to a top 4 if we end the season within ~6-8pts of the winner.

[anfieldanfield]

Top three.

The top three are all capable of winning the title. We're not.

[carheex]

Overexpectant?

It bothers me that so many people are angry, confused, looking for scapegoats etct when we aren't top of the premiership.
Just because we won the league plenty in a previous life that doesn't give us any right to expect to win it again, especially as the best we've managed in many people's living memories is a runners up spot!
Maybe if we all stopped living in the past we wouldn't be so disappointed when we don't win. Generally speaking, at the end of the day, the richest clubs will win the leagues - that can't be changed and we shouldn't expect Rafa and the boys to do the impossible and then get pissy with them when league titles don't materialise. Cups can be won by anyone - maybe this is why Rafa "seems" to concentrate more on them than the league as he knows they are reachable?
We are where we deserve to be in the league. I'm not being negative but we should look at 3rd place as a target at the start of the season - whether you like it or not, that would be a massive achievement and would show us punching above our weight. Let's just be happy with that and set a new target as and when there is an achievable one within striking distance.

I'm not saying we should celebrate 4th place finishes but we certainly shouldn't look at them as a failure when you consider the teams above us. Chelsea can buy the players and titles that they want more or less - that's nothing to be jealous of. Utd and Arsenal are both rich, and both have managers who have been at the club for a long, long time which is a massive advantage. Despite the media nonsense, there is NOT a "big4". There's a big3 - these 3 win, and will win the league on a regular basis. Including Liverpool in that group just makes us look like the worst of the top group when in reality, we're the best of the "other" group. People need to get this big4 crap out of their heads as it misleads fans into thinking we should be one of the 4 clubs winning the premiership - subsequently, this breeds negative feeling when we're deemed to "underachieveing".

[Pacman]

Top three.

The top three are all capable of winning the title. We're not.

Hahahahaha

Utter bollocks

[anfieldanfield]

Hahahahaha

Utter bollocks

The last time we won a title was nearly two decades ago.

We're not a Premiership winning side, Arsenal, Chelsea and Man Utd have proved they are.

[The Erectile Banana]

Top three.

The top three are all capable of winning the title. We're not.

Sad but true.

Every year we start the season with a new wave of optimism and every year we are left trailing by the turn of the year.

We haven't had a real title challenge since the year Uncle Roy's vintage attacking team threw the title away when United beat us 3-1 at Anfield and then we contrived to finish fourth after being second for months.

The other three top teams have won or consistently challenged for the league title in the last five years. We have not come within an asses roar of the title in this time.

We have been on the brink of becoming proper contenders for a while now. We need to make the step up soon.

[Joe King]

Top three.

The top three are all capable of winning the title. We're not.

[anfieldanfield]

Nobody is saying "we have to WIN the title now"....

All people are saying is we want to be challenging. But we're out the title race by early January. Again.

Not good enough....

[Jazzmaster]

Sad but true.

Every year we start the season with a new wave of optimism and every year we are left trailing by the turn of the year.

We haven't had a real title challenge since the year Uncle Roy's vintage attacking team threw the title away when United beat us 3-1 at Anfield and then we contrived to finish fourth after being second for months.

The other three top teams have won or consistently challenged for the league title in the last five years. We have not come within an asses roar of the title in this time.

We have been on the brink of becoming proper contenders for a while now. We need to make the step up soon.

Agreed. I think we have spent enough to cement our position in the top 4 but we need about three more top top signings to be in contention for the title. Winger, Defender, Striker.

[anfieldanfield]

Sad but true.

Every year we start the season with a new wave of optimism and every year we are left trailing by the turn of the year.

We haven't had a real title challenge since the year Uncle Roy's vintage attacking team threw the title away when United beat us 3-1 at Anfield and then we contrived to finish fourth after being second for months.

The other three top teams have won or consistently challenged for the league title in the last five years. We have not come within an asses roar of the title in this time.

We have been on the brink of becoming proper contenders for a while now. We need to make the step up soon.

There was a brief moment under Houllier, in spring 2002, when I thought we were well and truly in the title race...

We came closest under Roy Evans though. We played some fantastic football under him, people forget that too easily.

[Marky]

The last time we won a title was nearly two decades ago.

We're not a Premiership winning side, Arsenal, Chelsea and Man Utd have proved they are.

Well said, how anyone can disagree with that i'll never know.
Some fans need a reality check. I used to be one of them.
The United game at home was the game were it hit home that we're just not up to it, maybe it's a mental block, maybe it's just a lack of quality in certain areas, who knows but at the end of the day we're just not good enough to be in the title race.

[Neil Young]

Nobody is saying "we have to WIN the title now"....

All people are saying is we want to be challenging. But we're out the title race by early January. Again.

Not good enough....

FFS AD, if (and of course that conditional is something you can seize on if you want) we win our two games in hand then we are just seven points behind Arsenal. Given there would still be 17 games left, we are not out of the title race.

I think it's unlikely we'll win the title but to use those doubts and to ignore our games in hand so that one can reach the desired, negative conclusion about being "out of the title race by early January" is entirely unwarranted.

[Neil Young]

We came closest under Roy Evans though. We played some fantastic football under him, people forget that too easily.

We were sh*t in defence. That's part of playing football too IMO. Then again I remember when we had a decent defence and played good attacking football too.

[The Erectile Banana]

Nobody is saying "we have to WIN the title now"....

All people are saying is we want to be challenging. But we're out the title race by early January. Again.

Not good enough....

We haven't mounted a real title challenge since the time of Roy Evans. Even the year we finished second under Ged we were never serious contenders and crept into second towards the end of the season.

I think Rafa can win us the league, but it's looking like it's going to be a lot tougher than a lot of us hoped/thought it would be. The way the game has gone with the concentration of power/wealth at the top of the table it has become increasingly difficult for other teams to break into the monopoly of the top two/three. Chelsea only broke in when one of the world's richest men took over their club. Outside of the top three clubs only Leeds and Blackburn have won the league in the last 17 years. The days when any team could put a good team together and have a good shot at success are gone. Look at how the amount of points needed to win the league has shot up over the past few years.

It's going to be an uphill battle to reclaim the title but we must keep faith in Rafa and the team. If anyone can deliver number 19 it's Rafa.