Juan Mata believes Manchester United will emulate Liverpool and fight for the Premier League title next season without the distraction of European football.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard, who already owns a Champions League winner’s medal after playing a pivotal role in Chelsea’s dramatic win in Munich, insists last year’s Premier League champions will bounce back to winning ways.<\/p>\n
United enter a final Premier League showdown at Southampton in seventh place, three points behind sixth-placed Tottenham.<\/p>\n
However Mata claims United can emulate Liverpool who, unfettered by European football, have ignited the Premier League with an energetic brand of football.<\/p>\n
“It can definitely be an advantage in the league,” Mata said.<\/p>\n
“Of course, I would rather be playing in the Champions League, but if we take Liverpool as the example – you have a team who have fought all the way to the finish without having played in the Champions League.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Juan Mata believes Manchester United will emulate Liverpool and fight for the Premier League title next season without the distraction of European football. The Spaniard, who already owns a Champions League winner’s medal after playing a pivotal role in Chelsea’s dramatic win in Munich, insists last year’s Premier League champions will bounce back to winning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,80],"tags":[37],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3995"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3996,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3995\/revisions\/3996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/africanexaminer.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}