Arsenal news: Gary Neville takes a swipe at Arsene Wenger’s team and accuses them of ‘walking around’ in defeat to Manchester City
Theo Walcott put Gunners ahead before City came back with goals from Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling at The Etihad
GARY NEVILLE has accused Arsenal’s players of laziness in their defeat to Manchester City.
The Sky Sports pundit said they were ‘walking around’ and showing a ‘lack of interest’ at the Etihad.
Neville was speaking on Monday Night Football ahead of Liverpool’s trip to Everton and identified a third reason why the Gunners slipped to defeat, in addition to the two Arsene Wenger had already pointed out.
Keep up to date with ALL the ARSENAL news, gossip, transfers and goals on our club page plus fixtures, results and live match commentary
The Gunners boss had blamed City‘s two goals on poor offside decisions, before claiming that his players were tired.
But Neville said that a third problem was that their back-four did not work hard enough and allowed City to get back into the game.
Neville said: “I couldn’t believe the tiredness. They looked knackered, shot to pieces and they were walking.
“You never walk on a football pitch. There’s a lack of interest. There was something fundamentally wrong.
“I started to question the travel factor and then dismissed that. On Sunday they changed their style and went more direct.
“They’ve always dominated games. Accuracy and possession was well down and that’s unusual.
“Because they had less of the ball and there was a style change, they suffered with that maybe and looked shot to pieces.
“The third one is the tactical situation with their back- four, who are lazy.
“They’re not being proactive and Pep Guardiola’s tactics have done that to them.
“They were always too deep because the centre-backs and full-backs took easy options and the midfielders were shot to pieces.
“At one point Mesut Ozil tries tries to drag them up the pitch, and Alexia Sanchez puts a shift in and he’s trying to say ‘get up the pitch’.
“The back four weren’t courageous enough to go one-v-one in wide areas.”
Fellow Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher also took a swipe at the Gunners.
He added: “I think it was a huge win for City. Serious questions would have been asked if they’d lost another big game.
“Can you be bothered to ask the same questions of Arsenal?
“They and their big players let you down in big games.”