Thursday 7 February 2019 12:53, UK
Manchester City's strength in depth gives them an advantage over Liverpool in the Premier League title race, according to Danny Higginbotham.
City won 2-0 at Everton on Wednesday evening to return to the top of the table, having trailed Jurgen Klopp's team by 10 points in late December.
Liverpool have a game in hand, but have drawn their last two matches and are under pressure to get back to winning ways against Bournemouth on Saturday.
"If you look at yesterday evening's game, the second goal in particular, two substitutes combined," Higginbotham told Sky Sports News.
"The three players that came on, (Gabriel) Jesus, (Kevin) De Bruyne, (Raheem) Sterling - that is incredible strength in depth.
"I think if you look at Manchester City, the only place where you'd really look and think to yourself, 'if you got an injury in this area you could be in big trouble', is Fernandinho. So it's definitely advantage them."
Liverpool had the chance to restore a seven-point lead after City lost at Newcastle last Tuesday, but drew at home to Leicester a day later, before stuttering to another 1-1 draw at West Ham on Monday night.
Much has been made of the pressure on Liverpool to end a 29-year wait for a top-flight title, but Higginbotham believes, injuries, rather than nerves, are responsible for their recent struggles.
"Everybody's talking about the nerves getting to them, the pressure getting to them," Higginbotham said. "I'm not buying into that at the moment. I think they've been unfortunate with injuries that they've got.
"If we look at how they've done this season, their defence has been absolutely incredible. The last two games that they've drawn they've taken the lead.
"More often than not in those games, you'd say they're going to keep a clean sheet and they're going to be able to build on that, but injuries to the likes of (Joe) Gomez, (Dejan) Lovren and (Trent) Alexander-Arnold has put a real amount of pressure on the defensive side of the games because going forward they're not creating or not scoring as much at this point in time."
