Pep Guardiola now says whether he thinks Newcastle can be title contenders this season

Pep Guardiola's Manchester City have a pretty strong grip on the Premier League of late but even he never takes it for granted that his side will be champions.

It would be pretty arrogant to assume that your side will win the league before a ball has been kicked, and as much as everyone else backs Manchester City to be favourites to lift the Premier League trophy each season, Pep Guardiola has admitted that his aim at the start of every season is to finish in the top four and go from there.

It's likely this humility and awareness of the threat of the teams around him that sees him winning the title every year, but this year there's a feeling that City will have the strongest competition in a while.

Arsenal are a striker away from being favourites this season and if Ivan Toney, who looks destined to leave Brentford, ends up at the Emirates we could have a title race for the ages.

Pep Guardiola was very complimentary about Newcastle again

Liverpool are looking strong even without any signings, but under a new boss, they're an unknown, Chelsea are completely unpredictable and Manchester United and Tottenham likely won't mount a title challenge but will be there to disrupt the top four.

Pep Guardiola, who is often complimentary about the Magpies, has backed Newcastle to be in the mix too and believes they could even be a threat to the title as quoted by Newcastle World.

"Always at the beginning of the season, the first target is to finish in the top four. People say: 'Oh, come on', I say 'no'. Newcastle are not in Europe, and are going to play one game a week. Newcastle with one game a week this season will be the Newcastle of two seasons ago."

Newcastle probably need a couple of signings to hit the top four

Everyone is expecting Newcastle to return to that form that saw us break into the top four now that we don't have that Champions League distraction or, hopefully, the horrendous injury crisis of last season.

If we can bring in a new right-winger and a central defender then we absolutely will be there or thereabouts.

We started our campaign with a win but it was very unconvincing. That being said, they don't all have to be pretty as long as we keep getting three points on the board. Bournemouth will be a big test as we absolutely hate the Vitality Stadium, but if we can take three points away from there, it will be a big signal of our intent, I feel.

NUFCFEED has got with the times and now we have a YouTube channel. Here you can see Ash and Liam discuss the things they've written about in the previous week and we'll discuss the games both past and future.

Here's our first weekly roundup talking about the Southampton game, all of this Marc Guehi stuff, Newcastle's search for a new winger and we look ahead to the Bournemouth game.