“I’m not convinced” – Gary Neville makes familiar Liverpool prediction as Jamie Carragher disagrees

“I’m not convinced” – Gary Neville makes familiar Liverpool prediction as Jamie Carragher disagrees

Not for the first time in recent years, Gary Neville has predicted Liverpool to finish outside the top four of the Premier League this season.

Having ended a harrowing 2025/26 campaign in fifth place and just about salvaging Champions League qualification, the Reds will be striving for a big improvement this time around, but a 2-2 draw at Newcastle on Sunday indicated that they remain unconvincing.

In contrast to last summer, incoming transfer activity has been thin on the ground this year, although reports from France over the past 24 hours suggest that a deal for Bradley Barcola could be imminent.

Neville and Carragher disagree on Liverpool predictions

Neville and Jamie Carragher were tasked with giving their predictions for the Premier League season on Sky Sports‘ Monday Night Football, and while the latter backed Liverpool to finish fourth, the former believes we’ll end up one position lower.

The 51-year-old said: “I can’t separate Man United and Liverpool in fourth place. I genuinely have no idea. I think City are in a better position than United. At the moment, I’m not convinced by United or Liverpool, but I do think they’ll finish fourth and fifth [respectively].”

(Photo by George Wood/Getty Images)

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Neville got it wrong on Liverpool before – will it happen again?

Reds fans will merrily recall that when Neville last predicted their team to finish fifth and below Man United (in 2024/25), the Merseysiders romped to the Premier League title that season while the Old Trafford outfit were a lowly 15th.

However, Liverpool were in a much stronger place two years ago than they are now, with pretty much the entirety of Jurgen Klopp’s final Anfield team bequeathed to Arne Slot, whereas Iraola can’t call on the likes of Mo Salah, Andy Robertson, Luis Diaz or Trent Alexander-Arnold.

Nobody is realistically expecting us to challenge for the title, but fans would be justified in calling for a notable improvement on last term, and that’d mean finishing comfortably inside the Champions League positions.

Judging from the admittedly minimal sample size of the opening weekend of the campaign, there’s a top-four finish for the taking considering the flaws of the chasing pack behind champions and favourites Arsenal.

If Liverpool are to prove Neville wrong again, though, they’ll need to be a lot more defensively secure and clinical in attack than they were at St James’ Park on Sunday. A couple of top-level signings in the next week could go a long way to addressing those shortcomings.