Gary Neville claims he predicted Arsenal ‘getting battered’ by Man City after watching players in tunnel

Pundit messaged pals about four-goal collapse as he explains what Mikel Arteta got wrong
Marc Mayo28 April 2023

Arsenal looked like they would get “absolutely battered” by Manchester City as soon as they stepped into the tunnel, Gary Neville has claimed.

The former defender has revealed his prediction of a four-goal collapse immediately before the Gunners were beaten 4-1 at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday night.

“We have a group chat and honestly, I saw them in the tunnel,” he told The Overlap.

“And I said Arsenal are going to have to do very well here not to concede four. Literally, in the tunnel you just thought they are going to get absolutely battered.

“I didn’t think that a week ago, or a few days ago, I thought it was going to be tight.”

Aside from Arsenal’s lack of preparedness mentally for the game, Neville explained why Mikel Arteta’s tactical refusal to tighten the defence played a role in the defeat.

Many teams go to City and park the bus, and the pundit was left confused by how open the Gunners left themselves.

“I didn’t see any plan from Arsenal during the game to make it more difficult and to stop them,” he said.

“If you get to 30 minutes and haven’t conceded, would that have been a massive backwards step if he’d have done that, Mikel Arteta?”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in