Jose Mourinho reckons the Premier League will be a three-horse race between Manchester United, Chelsea and Manchester City.
The Real Madrid coach, who won two league titles with Chelsea during his three years in charge at Stamford Bridge, gave his take on who he thinks will challenge for the title this season.
"I believe Chelsea, Man United and Man City, that's it," he was quoted as saying in the Daily Telegraph.
On his exclusion of the Arsenal and Liverpool from the title race, the Portuguese explained: "It's very difficult for (new Liverpool manager) Roy Hodgson as over the last three years they have been getting worse, worse and worse."
"The Liverpool of 2004 was better than the Liverpool of 2005, 2005 was better than 2006 and 2006 better than 2007.
"And they arrive at a situation now where, but for Jamie Carragher, Steven Gerrard, Pepe Reina, Fernando Torres, if his head is there, it is very difficult for Roy to make Liverpool champions. He needs time and it's not easy because I don't think they went in the right direction."
"I don't think Arsenal can win. Year after year it looks like they will but no. It's always the same type of comment, ‘It's a young team, it will be next season'.
Meanwhile, The Special One also conceded that Man City have overtaken Real Madrid as the dominant force in the transfer market.
The Madrid coach finished second in the race to sign former Lazio left-back Aleksander Kolarov, as he was outbid by the Eastlands club, who paid £17million as part of their £130m summer spending spree.
Therefore, he can't help but to agree with Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson's comments on City's "Kamikaze spending".
He said: "When Sir Alex spoke about kamikaze spending, if he was talking about (City) eating the market, I agree with him.
"But if they have the money, they can do it and, if they have the ambition to win the Premier League, they can do it.
"If someone wants to compete with them for a player it is very difficult because they are dominant in the market. The player they say they want is the player that they get.
"I was interested in [Aleksandar] Kolarov when I came here to Madrid, but I couldn't compete with City as they went to values that I couldn't."