Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola believes that the race for the Premier League title will be wide open this season. Despite many pundits thinking it will be a straight fight between the Citizens and Liverpool, the Spaniard thinks the rest of the ‘big six’ will be in contention.

He says that despite Manchester United not being in the title fight last campaign, he still believes that City’s rivals will be in the mix after strengthening their squad over the summer months:

“I think United with Maguire and the others have bought. Arsenal as well and Chelsea and Tottenham. At the beginning, there are five or six teams who are contenders. I don’t care if people say we are going to win titles.”

“That is normal, we just try to win the next game against West Ham and then after that we will see. But United it doesn’t matter about the recent years they’re always contenders as are Liverpool and Chelsea. Always contenders to be champions, of course.”

The first few fixtures of the season should tell us a lot about where the respective contenders are at in terms of their competitiveness. City face Tottenham in their second leg game after an opening away fixture against West Ham.

United, meanwhile, start their campaign against Chelsea at home, with Liverpool playing Arsenal in the third league game at the end of August. With so many big games so early on, there could be some surprising results over the coming weeks.

City are currently 1/2 favourites to win the Premier League with Unibet, with Liverpool 11/4 at Paddy Power. United are currently fourth in the running, currently 40/1 with Sky Bet.