Gary Neville has criticised Arsenal’s senior players for their lack of leadership during the side’s recent run of poor results, which has seen them lose their grip on the Premier League title race. The pundit believes that the quartet of experienced players – Martin Odegaard, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Thomas Partey and Granit Xhaka – have not been able to step up and lead when their younger team-mates needed it most.
Neville highlighted Xhaka’s altercation with Trent Alexander-Arnold at Anfield, Partey’s poor performances in recent matches, Zinchenko’s mistake in the Liverpool game and Odegaard’s difficult game against Manchester City as examples of the senior players failing to have an impact. He also pointed to the huddle that Zinchenko started against Southampton and Odegaard’s instruction to break it up as further evidence of a lack of leadership.
The pundit believes that this lack of guidance has contributed to Arsenal’s collapse in the title race, with Manchester City now able to go four points clear if they win their two games in hand. He noted that when the pressure was on, Arsenal’s back four would split, they would get deep for throw-ins, they would be out of shape and they would not do the things they had been doing earlier in the match. He argued that someone needed to intervene and tell the team to slow down, split the back four, get their midfielders spread out and get their forwards high and wide.
Neville believes that this leadership could have come from either on or off the pitch, but it was not present in Arsenal’s most difficult moments. He concluded by saying that he had not seen anyone compose the team when the game was going against them.