Gary Neville is wrong about Arsenal again after latest Mikel Arteta swipe

Well, we’ve found our buzzword for the season - the ‘handbrake’. The phrase actually comes from an Arsenal-inspired adage often used by Arsene Wenger in a variety of different contexts.

For Mikel Arteta, the word has been attached to the way in which he has approached his matches against Liverpool and Manchester City this season. Starting Mikel Merino in the midfield alongside Declan Rice and Martin Zubimendi has been the key catalyst.

I too was frustrated and even fell into the camp of those who think he wasted 45 minutes of the first half against City with that selection. In the imminent aftermath of the game views can be different from what they become once marinated after a few night’s sleep, that was the case for me when I had thought harder about things.

But seemingly not for Gary Neville, who doubled down on his comments from the weekend on Sky’s The Overlap.

He said, “I don’t think 60,000 or 70,000 fans can be wrong in how they feel and I don’t think any of us who were in the studio or in that stadium can be wrong either.

“The big thing for me is the players. He names that team on Friday afternoon or, let’s say, Thursday afternoon in training, and he leaves out Eze and he leaves out Martinelli, and he puts in Trossard and Merino.

“I guarantee you that dressing room, straight away, are looking at him and thinking, ‘Hmm, you’ve done it the same again, you’ve done it at Anfield and a little bit at Old Trafford, but certainly at Anfield.’

“He could have been more attacking at Anfield, and he wasn’t, and certainly against City from the start, he could have been more attacking.

“He’s going to regret this if he doesn’t start to take the handbrake off. I’m going to repeat the comment “handbrake” because he’s got players there that need to play in these games.

“You can’t look back at the end of the season and think, “I’ve lost at Anfield, I’ve dropped points at home against City, I’ve dropped five points now in those two matches and I could have picked a more attacking team”, and I think there’s a problem that’s starting to become a pattern for him.”

Let’s dive in, shall we? Neville’s contention is for both games he could have been more attacking and as a result had a better chance of winning both games and therefore a better chance of winning the title come the end of the season.

There is something of an elephant in the room, or rather not in the room, when it comes to this debate and it surrounds Martin Odegaard. The club captain for both games was either not fit to start or not fit at all.

In both situations in which Odegaard came off against Leeds United and Nottingham Forest, Ethan Nwaneri came onto the field. In both games from the start he’s not been fit, Mikel Merino has started.

Both these games happened to be against the two main title contenders for the league alongside Arsenal. Both games were tightly contested and easily could have gone either side’s way.

An important question to ask is, if Martin Odegaard were fit, would he have started against Manchester City and Liverpool? Based on all the evidence of Arteta’s previous selections, the overwhelmingly more likely answer is: of course, he would have started.

Odegaard is significantly more offensive than Merino. Yet he still has plenty to offer in the defensive third and in terms of Arsenal’s pressing game.

The alternatives were Eberechi Eze or the aforementioned Nwaneri. For Eze, at Anfield Eze had only just signed and it was deemed too early to throw him in from the start over an experienced head like Merino.

Against Manchester City, Arteta revealed post-match that there were potential load-bearing reasons why Eze couldn’t feature from the start that us journalists and subsequently fans might not have been aware of which we take at face value.

In the case of Nwaneri, the 18-year-old started just his first game of the season against Port Vale on Wednesday. The youngster has started big games in the past but last season these came playing off the right, a far less exposed position in Arteta’s team hence why he likes to bed younger players in, in these areas.

We’re currently seeing such a process happen with Max Dowman, who plays the majority of his youth games in a central role, which is where his future is seen more. Therefore, for Nwaneri to be dropped in would have been risky in what are two of the four biggest games of Arsenal’s season, certainly the toughest, most high-pressure, and most demanding.

Don’t forget, Arteta started Riccardo Calafiori in both games and the Italian was regularly spotted rampaging into the opposition half in central unorthodox areas as has been his instruction. Hardly a cautious style of using your tall left-back.

Jurrien Timber too was often rampaging up the right flank to support Noni Madueke or Bukayo Saka while both Declan Rice and Mikel Merino had instructions too to get forward. Is Merino a more defensive player than Eze and Nwaneri? Yes, he is.

But is his selection overall a sign of Arteta being too cautious, putting the handbrake on and costing his side a win? For me, in recent days, I’ve done a 180 on this and changed my view.

I think in both cases the opposition has been somewhat overlooked too. Pep Guardiola spoke as much about how he changed his style and as a result recorded the lowest possession in 601 games of management.

That was down both to his style but also Arsenal’s intentions. Arsenal wanted to win both games, Arteta wanted to win and picked a team he believed was best-equipped with what he had available to do it.

Both the last two title winners failed to beat Arsenal, the team that finished second, in either of the last two seasons. These have not been the games that have defined the title race; the contests against the other 17 teams have been, and this again will be the deciding factor.

So why does Neville feel the need to double down on this take and not reflect upon the broader picture? It's beyond me.