DID HE GO TOO FAR?
Yes, Gary Neville’s dissection of Arsenal’s failings was passionate and articulate but...
Gary Neville unleashed a perfect storm as arsenal walked their way to defeat at Wembley on Sunday.
His evisceration of the ‘spineless’ losing team — an ‘absolute disgrace’ — found favour with both those taking delight in this disintegration and many of those among the club’s fans who will take any punishment necessary to get arsene Wenger out the door.
‘very soothing stuff. like coming home,’ someone on Twitter said of Neville’s comments. ‘My new jam,’ added another.’ With its tone of dark menace, Neville’s comment: ‘Forget arsenal, i’ll come on to them in a minute,’ before describing Sergio aguero’s goal has already acquired cult status. The co- commentator equivalent of: ‘Wait there, i’ll be back to punch you in the face.’
When things are as bad as this — an arsenal side in which you fancy only Jack Wilshere and Pierreemerick aubameyang would be of any interest to Wenger’s successor — it is hard to argue with much of the substance of what Neville (below) had to say.
But it is the visceral, personal nature of it all which is harder to live with. Someone on Twitter — former British Olympic heptathlete Kelly Sotherton, actually — chipped in at one stage during arsenal’s 3-0 defeat to object that it was not as if arsenal ‘have killed a puppy’. Sailing against the tide of public opinion on social media is a risky business at the best of times. She was soon put in her place.
Serendipity then presented Neville with the next best thing to a puppy — the young arsenal fan whose tears have made him a symbol of the pitiful team.
‘look at that. That’s what you’ve caused,’ Neville told arsenal, with commentator Martin Tyler the only one who seemed to see the funny side. in the hyperbole stakes, that line was right up there with roy Keane’s description of Jack Wilshere as ‘the most overrated player on the planet’ during a poor display against Swedish club Ostersunds last week.
at times like this, it’s hard to avoid the impression that football is becoming a personal shouting contest and that, like everything in the attention- seeking space the game now occupies, noise has become everything. it washes through social media channels, to the delight of broadcasters for whom digital audiences are beginning to overtake those who watch on Tv. in the digital realm, viewer engagement is commercially important. it was reflected in these pages too. Neville’s comments featured substantially in our coverage of the Carabao Cup final on Monday. They frequently do, along with those of Jamie Carragher, who hasn’t held back on arsenal either, twice describing them as ‘pathetic’ this season. The arguments are assuming a life of their own. and they won’t recede amid the debating war which football has become, with Sky Sports’ The Debate show and Sky’s The Gary Neville Podcast up against BT Sport’s Premier League
Tonight. ‘ it’s a game with its accompanying circus and you need people who can stir things up,’ says one of Britain’s leading Tv football producers.
There’s nothing much new in that. The broadcasters have been battling for attention ever since the first ‘iTv Panel’ of Derek Dougan, Brian Clough and Malcolm allison helped them beat the BBC in the punditry war at the 1970 World Cup.
Clough, of course, was happy to be brutally critical, famously overstepping the mark to describe goalkeeper Jan Tomaszewski as a ‘clown’ in a legendary moment of hubris before the Pole kept england out of the 1974 World Cup.
Terry venables and Jimmy Hill knew they were actors, too. Their own on- screen drama revolved around an apparent mutual antipathy in the iTv studio in the 1990s. The pair actually got on well off- screen but appreciated that tension between them created a helpful drama on air.
alan Hansen brought a quieter level of intelligence and insight when he raised Tv’s game from 1991. But andy Gray turned up the decibels and delivered an actor’s vocal quality, with his many catchphrases. (‘Take a bow, son’). Gray also understood he was walking a stage. Theatricality was never going to be Neville’s thing, yet an obsession for detail and a relentless work ethic always have been.
Never one of football’s most naturally gifted players, he required sheer hard work to perform to the maximum level of his ability. So he, as much as any other pundit, expects those players he analyses to at least put a shift in, too.
it’s why Wenger’s team are such anathema to him and why, for some of an arsenal disposition, he has become such an unlikely cult hero this week. even though it might seem to others that he is using the dying days of the Wenger regime to put the boot in.
arsenal had already been annihilated by him once this season, for their dismal performance at liverpool. Other targets have been Newcastle United, whose display against Manchester City in December was, Neville said, ‘the most negative’ style of football he had ever seen. West Ham’s Marko arnautovic has been castigated as: ‘ronaldo in his own mind. He thinks he’s better than he is.’ Manchester United’s Paul Pogba has been criticised too.
it can feel unpleasant and an assault on the senses at times but for Sky, a broadcaster grappling with declining match- day audiences and the shift to digital, it’s doing nicely. ‘This is an entertainment business. Don’t forget that,’ said the producer. ‘We’ve spent years getting away from blandness. We’re not going back.’