Liverpool are brilliant, but the Prem is getting worse , especially their so-called biggest rivals

WITH the exception of runaway leaders Liverpool, the Premier League has been poor this season.

We were told at the start of the season that Manchester City were the best team our top flight has seen, yet they are 22 points adrift of Jurgen Klopp’s men at the start of February.

You want more proof ? Southampton are the epitome of an average team and for months they’ve been right in the relegation mire. Yet they’ve had one decent run and all of a sudden they’re two wins off the European places, which is utter madness. I played against much better Saints teams than this one back in the 90s, sides containing Matt Le Tissier and Co, and they flirted with relegation regularly.

So when people talk up the quality of the product at the top of our game now, I’m not inclined to agree because I don’t think it’s as good as it was 20 years ago.

Some will tell you it’s so concertinaed because the smaller clubs are getting better and have more money than ever to spend, but I’d suggest the bigger teams aren’t as good as they were.

Tottenham have been relatively poor of late, despite a good win at the weekend.

Manchester United and Arsenal, who for nine seasons in the late 90s and early 2000s swapped titles, have been dreadful at times.

And if you think the sides lower down are better than they were, go and ask West Ham season-ticket-holders of 30 or 40 years whether this lot are as good as the era which contained Tony Cottee, Frank McAvennie and Ian Bishop.

Or Aston Villa fans if a team which had £100million lavished on it in the summer is as good as the side that was relegated in 2016.

A competition, by its very definition, is something in which everyone involved has at the very least an outside chance of winning when it begins, but that’s not the case any more and in truth hasn’t been for a while.

Barring one or two exceptions, you could pretty much predict these days who will finish in the bottom half at the start of the season. And you could nail down the top eight as well.

People will say the performances of Sheffield United this season and Wolves last season disprove my theory.

And the fact our teams are all through to the knockout stages in Europe surely shows how strong our sides are.

But Liverpool are the only team who haven’t lost at least six games already – City have lost as many as Wolves – and there’s no way the Blades or the Molineux men will finish in the top four, they’re just teasing us with the prospect right now.

The problem is that too many clubs these days have the mentality of ‘Let’s stay in the Premier League and no more’. Sheffield United are a decent team but they shouldn’t be anywhere near the top five or six.

In the mid-to-late 90s, they would have been 12th or 13th, and that would have been seen as a good season.

We’ve almost reached a point where you might as well not bother turning on your telly until March or April, when you can watch the relegation scrap.