Merson Says: Liverpool's safer style plays into Man Utd's hands

‘Magic Man’ Paul Merson returns with his latest column, where he explains why he expects Manchester United to get something against Liverpool’s new “safer” style on Sunday.

United have won two of their last three games on home soil against Liverpool, and kick-started their season in Erik ten Hag’s first year in charge in their third game against the Reds – something they will hope to do again.

Arne Slot has enjoyed a perfect opening two games as Liverpool manager, comfortably seeing off Ipswich and Brentford, but the Super Sunday game, live on Sky Sports Premier League, represents easily the biggest challenge of his burgeoning Anfield career.

Find out why Merse thinks Man Utd will be better suited to playing against Slot’s Liverpool than his predecessor Jurgen Klopp, and why the next three Premier League games will “define” Arsenal’s season by the end of September…

Man Utd will get a result against ‘safe’ Liverpool

This is it – a big, big football match. Liverpool have to go to Man Utd and get a result and if you’re a Man Utd fan, it’s a final cup final, a cup final. The one thing we question about Man Utd over the last few years is consistency. I thought they did alright against Fulham, they played some good football.

Against Brighton they were unlucky, the disallowed goal hits his knee, but they shouldn’t have lost that football match. You come away from there with at least a draw.

I don’t see Man Utd losing this game. I think Man Utd cause Liverpool problems, I think it’ll be an entertaining 2-2 draw.

Liverpool are a different team now. They’re not going to play the Klopp way. The manager has come in with his own ideas and he’s more solid, he’s more regimented, they’re safe, and they’re more cautious at the same time.

They’ve got great players up front where the manager goes, ‘you get on with it and win us the game and we’ll make sure we are solid at the back’. Man Utd don’t want a gung-ho game.

This plays into Man Utd’s hands that Liverpool will come and play a little bit safer. If this gets into an end-to-end football match, Liverpool have more of a threat and probably have better players all round the pitch.

So for me, that’s where I think it plays into Man Utd’s hands a little bit more with the way Liverpool will play.

I still think it’ll be an entertaining game – there’s too much talent going forward on this pitch for there not to be goals.

Next three games will define Arsenal’s season

They’ve had a hard, hard start, Arsenal. This fixture computer, the next three games – they are are defining games of the season for Arsenal.

You’re talking Brighton who have won both games and on their day can pass it around and have a right go at you and do special things.

Then you’ve got Tottenham away and Man City away. They lose two of those football matches out of three, or even win one and draw two, they’re not far out of the title race already.

That’s how ruthless it is.

Man City put up numbers, we know Man City finished strongly. You don’t want to be going to Man City in a few weeks on Super Sunday and need to win the game to stay in touch.

So these next two games are massive for Arsenal. I think they beat Brighton, but for a game that probably at the start of season looked a nice one, it’s become a hard game. A hard game.

They need to get through that, and they need to get three points because they need to stay with Manchester City in my opinion.

They need to stay on their coat-tails and after the international break, you couldn’t pick two harder games for me, Tottenham away in a massive north London derby, and then the following week Man City away at the Etihad.

You lose both of them and you could be six points behind Man City. That’s too many already. Sorry, people might go there’s 30-odd games left, but if Man City lost three more games, that would only give us an opportunity to lose one more.

It’s a big, big, big, big few weeks coming up for Arsenal.

Consistency remains the big question for Chelsea

Chelsea’s win at Wolves was down to brilliant finishing, some brilliant finishing, brilliant counter-attacking football. Wolves were terrible. I don’t want to be a party pooper and I don’t want to be a Chelsea fan – you don’t want to be flat-track bullies.

That the week before they didn’t lay a glove on Man City, didn’t lay a glove.

They finished last season beating West Ham, Brighton and Forest. But a couple of weeks before that they were getting smashed at Arsenal by five. That’s the benchmark.

This is what I say about Chelsea. It’s consistency, it’s consistency. And this is what they need to do, beat Palace this weekend, and then when they start playing the big boys. They’ve got a great start to the season.

They’ve got some real good fixtures, but’s it’s consistency. Madueke got a great hat-trick. Real, real good finishes, hitting them hard and low down at the goalkeeper’s feet, and he was very good.

He’s got to do that again this weekend, and this is what it’s all about. It’s being consistent. It can’t be nine out of 10 one week and a four out of 10 week after.

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