Manchester City will always be a smaller club than Manchester United claims Liverpool legend | OneFootball

Jamie Carragher has claimed that Manchester City will never be a bigger club than their Premier League and bitter North-West rivals Manchester United and Liverpool.

Pep Guardiola’s nine years in charge at City to date have brought plenty of success to the Etihad Stadium and a plethora of major trophies including six Premier League titles and a UEFA Champions League triumph along the way.

Throughout his tenure, Guardiola has also led Manchester City to unprecedented heights by winning a continental Treble in 2023, yielding four top-flight titles in a row, and exceeding 100 points in a single Premier League season in the 2017/18 campaign for the first time ever.

The 54-year-old most recently surpassed his 1,000th game in management in Sunday’s 3-0 win over Liverpool, with the Catalan having now also managed 550 games for Manchester City since his arrival from Bayern Munich in the summer of 2016, winning 71.8 per cent of those. 

But despite that success, former Liverpool defender Carragher has described Manchester City’s chase to become the biggest club in England as impossible, even if they go on to win more trophies than their closest rivals.

The footballer-turned-pundit, who made 737 appearances for the Anfield club between 1997 and 2013, was not present for Manchester City’s deserved victory over the underperforming Premier League champions, but hit out at the club ahead of kick-off. 

“Manchester City will never be bigger than Manchester United, and Liverpool vs Man City will never be bigger than Liverpool vs Man United,” Carragher told the Daily Mail.

“That just won’t happen, it can’t happen. Historically, Liverpool and Manchester United will always be the biggest two clubs in the country. I don’t think that will ever change. It’s very difficult for teams who come later. It’s almost set in stone who the huge clubs are.”

Carragher continued, “They [Manchester City] may end up having more trophies and league titles if they carry on winning and if United keep not being in the shout for trophies.

“But it’s difficult to see any club in this country ever being above Liverpool or Manchester United in terms of size and stature.”

Since their establishment in 1892, Liverpool currently lead the way in total trophies won but the rapid growth that Sheikh Mansour has brought to Manchester City following the club’s takeover in 2008 shows promise that that record may be overtaken in the decades to come.

Not only does the club’s future look promising from a silverware standpoint but from a global interest and revenue perspective too, having brought in £736.64 million last year – exceeding that of Manchester United and Liverpool by some margin.

United have the largest online presence of any English club with around 650 million followers but City – who have a chart-topping total of 33.1 million followers on social platform TikTok – are soaring and could some day become the highest followed club in the Premier League.