Football expert Paul Merson has ruled out Manchester United from contention for the English Premier League (EPL) title.

This is after the Red Devils lost three of its season’s opening matches.

Merson believes that only Liverpool and Arsenal can compete with Manchester City at the top of the table.

City has had a tremendous start to the 2023/24 season, Pep Guardiola’s team, who achieved a treble last season, has had a perfect record of five wins in five matches.

This places them at the EPL table’s summit with a two-point advantage over Liverpool, Arsenal, and Tottenham.

On Saturday, United suffered a 3-1 defeat at the hands of Brighton, marking their third loss in the initial five Premier League matches of the season under Erik ten Hag’s management.

As a result, they find themselves trailing Manchester City by a margin of nine points.

‘Liverpool and Arsenal are the only contenders for Manchester City this season,’ Merson said.

Liverpool was poor against Wolves first half, really poor. But they came out in the second half and blew Wolves away.

‘The problem is you can’t be doing that against the better teams.

“You don’t want to be going to the Emirates or the Etihad and playing like that, the game would be all over in the first half.

“You’ve just got to stick with Man City for as long as you can. Every game that goes by, you have to make sure you’re three points away from them, tops.

“‘For example, Manchester United are already nine points behind. They’re finished. Done. They can’t win the league – because it’s Man City. If it’s any other team you can go, ‘Oh if you put a run together, you never know.’ But City are not losing four or five games.

“The title race used to start in December and January – and it was about who had the best run after that. Now Man City have blown it out of the water. You can’t fall behind.”

Manchester United will have a tough assignment tonight when they take on Bayern in the Uefa Champions League group stage.