Gary Neville believes Arsenal’s “obsession” with set-pieces is contributing to their failure to win the Premier League title this season.
The Gunners on Saturday blew the chance to close the gap on table-topping Liverpool to five points by losing at home to West Ham. Just over 24 hours later, they watched on as Liverpool ran out comfortable 2-0 winners over Manchester City to move 11 points clear.
Arsenal have suffered plenty of injuries this season, most notably to star man Bukayo Saka, before Gabriel Jesus and Kai Havertz were ruled out for the rest of the season. But Neville believes the Gunners’ decline is more down to a new “rigid” approach, and presence of set-piece Nicolas Jover on the touchline and a subsequent lack of “freedom”.x
Put to him that a loss of forward options to injury was a reason behind losing to West Ham, Neville replied: It's a defence, but then you've got to plan for it. I know they didn't want do business in the January transfer window. They thought they were there wasn't quite the sort of value in the market or they couldn't get the player that would come in and impact them, but they have left themselves short. There's no doubt about that.
And they've fallen short. Even without players [ruled out], they still have to do that job yesterday.
“The last two seasons, they've gone very close, and I had a lot of admiration for them. I felt like they were getting close [to winning the title]. This season is more of a problem for them than the last two. Because when City weren't gonna be there, the team that had to be there was Arsenal because of the growth and how close they were getting.