Manchester City is already hoping Liverpool drop points in the Premier League title race, according to Ilkay Gundogan.
City's 2-0 loss at home to Wolves on Sunday left Jurgen Klopp's team eight points clear at the top of the table.
Pep Guardiola's side cut a similar Liverpool lead to retain the title last season, though Gundogan accepts City needs the Reds to slip up.
"We had the same, or a similar situation last year but at a much later stage," the Germany midfielder said. "It's quite early in the season and there are still a lot of points to play for, but if we want to speak about the Premier League title, we have to hope Liverpool will drop points."
Liverpool has started the season with eight straight wins but benefited from strokes of luck in its past two wins, with goalkeeper Dean Henderson's error for Sheffield United resulting in a tight victory before James Milner converted a debatable late penalty to down Leicester City.
"It's not that easy to take these things and see your biggest rival win all the time, with things that you can't control," said Gundogan. "It was no different last year, when they also won a lot of games, as we did.
"This time we are the side that have struggled quite a bit more and they have continued better. That's a fact we want to change.
"Watching their games and situation doesn't really help us to be honest - we need to fix our situation and drop as few points as possible.
"We have definitely dropped too many points in the early part of the season. If that's the case in the next few weeks the gap will be even bigger, so we have to win as much as possible."
While Gundogan acknowledged City is looking for Liverpool to slip up, Virgil van Dijk says Liverpool is not focusing on the side that pipped it to last term's title.
"It doesn't happen so much that they [City] didn't even score one goal at home, but a great performance from Wolves," Van Dijk told Sky Sports. "You have to give credit to them.
"They will try to bounce back from it and until then we just have to focus on international football.
"We tried it [to win the league] last year and City were just a little bit better. So far we're getting the points.
"There's always room for improvement in our game and we just have to focus on ourselves, not on any gaps or points differences between us and the others, us and City.
"A lot of busy periods coming up, December and January, so anything can happen."
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