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Former Liverpool player Jan Molby does not think that Liverpool will need to break the 90-point barrier to retain the Premier League.
The Reds wrapped up the title after 34 games last season, by which point they had 82 points; Liverpool ended up finishing on 84 points — 10 points clear of Arsenal in second place.
Arsenal's final points tally was the joint-lowest by a second-place team in the Premier League since 2016, when the Gunners finished the campaign as runners-up to Leicester City on 71 points.
And Molby is not envisaging a return to the famous title races between Liverpool and City this term.
The Reds finished on 97 points in 2018-19 and 92 points in 2021-22, but did not win the league in either campaign, as City pipped them to the post.
However, the current City side is nowhere near as ruthless as the ones from a few years ago, and Molby doesn't envisage Arsenal running Liverpool particularly close either.
“I’m not convinced we need to be the best Premier League team ever to win the league," Molby told Anfield Index. "I’ve got a feeling that 85 points might do it again. And we know what it was like when we went toe-to-toe with Manchester City.
“Every season we’re going in thinking, can we get 95 plus points? I don’t know. Can we get 85 points? I think we can. And I think that might just be enough again, isn’t it? So that’s where I’m at with it all.”
On Arsenal's title chances, Molby said: “By every day, I’m more convinced that with [Mikel] Arteta as the manager, they won’t win the Premier League."
Mikel Arteta himself, meanwhile, shifted the pressure onto Liverpool in the title race last week as he said that the Reds are the favorites to win the league.
"Well, they are the strongest for sure," Arteta told reporters ahead of his side’s clash with Nottingham Forest on Saturday, which the Gunners won 3-0.
"They have recruited probably the most, the two most decisive players that there were in Europe in the market. And they’ve done really well to recruit that.
"They are very strong. But we need to look at ourselves and what we need to do in terms of our abilities to be better than them. That’s it."
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