Last season was Arsenal’s best for a long time. Indeed, they’d not finished second in the Premier League since 2015/16, when Tottenham somehow capitulated and finished third in the two-horse race between themselves and Leicester City.
The Gunners were top of the table for much of the last campaign, before Manchester City surpassed them towards the end. Liverpool, meanwhile, had a very underwhelming season, eventually recovering to fifth, but things could have been way worse. This term, both are flying high. The Reds are second in the league by a point, with the Gunners level with them on points, and only in third because their goal difference is one worse than Liverpool’s.
While it’s tough to separate them at the moment, come the end of the season, Murphy believes it’ll be the Reds who are higher in the table, contrary to how things finished last time.
That’s largely because of three attackers who the pundit feels will outperform those in Arsenal’s forward line come the end of the campaign. “But when you look at Liverpool’s firepower compared to Arsenal’s,” he said on talkSPORT.
“[Bukayo] Saka is not [Mohamed] Salah. He’s a great player but he’s not [producing] Salah’s numbers. [Darwin] Nunez will score more than [Gabriel] Jesus. [Diogo] Jota will score than Jesus. And [Luis] Diaz will probably score more than [Gabriel] Martinelli now he’s fit, or equal.”
Of the lot, Salah is currently the highest Premier League scorer by some way. In fact, he’s second to only Erling Haaland across the entire league. Nunez has outscored each of the Arsenal forwards mentioned. Jota is currently ahead of Martinelli and Jesus, as is Nunez.
As such, if the pair of forward corps continue in the same vein as they are at the moment, Murphy may be right. However, there’s a while still to go, with the potential that some players could rise and some could fall.
Danny Murphy has detailed how Liverpool “will finish above Arsenal because of their firepower” as he picked out three men who will outperform Gunners stars.
