Manchester City go into the international break on a run they have rarely known: three Premier League defeats in a row, the latest a 3-1 loss at Nottingham Forest. Gary Neville believes the cloud of the Premier League’s financial case may finally be reaching the dressing room. Jamie Redknapp, looking at the table, has stopped seeing City as Arsenal’s main rival at all.
Where City stand
An independent Premier League commission found City guilty of 114 serious breaches of the league’s financial rules. The club deny all the charges and have lodged an appeal, and no sanctions have been announced. On the pitch, Enzo Maresca’s side have slipped to third, six points behind leaders Arsenal, with Brighton in between.
Neville: “It can’t be ruled out”
Speaking on NBC Sports’ Premier League Mornings at the weekend, Neville linked the slump to the noise around the case. “Something’s just not right at the moment and worrying. Things point towards the obvious cloud hanging over the club,” he said, as reported by Sky Sports.
“Is it finally catching up with them in terms of the mental fatigue of what would be negative publicity they’ve had on the players? Are they drained physically and mentally through that or are they just going through a bad patch?”
His argument is about what players hear away from the training ground. “Those players will be getting asked constantly, ‘What do you think is going to happen? What happens if they do get relegated? Will you stay?’,” he said. “Now you imagine that your family is having to put up with that, your agent’s continually thinking about those types of things, so it can’t be ruled out as a factor that’s going to start to seep in.”
Neville was careful not to turn it into an excuse. “They’ve got to play better, they’ve got to compete in games, they’ve got to make sure that they do better on the pitch from a tactical and physical perspective,” he said, before adding: “But I do believe it will be having some impact just because of the weight of what’s been hitting them from a publicity point of view in the last four to six weeks.”
How the “stain” argument began
This is not a new theme for Neville. Speaking after City’s win at Anfield on 11 October, a result overshadowed by the commission’s verdict, he warned of “the stain, the stigma and the damage this is going to do to them”, in comments also reported by Sky Sports. Jamie Carragher said then that “the feeling around Manchester City will only grow the more they win” and called for “a resolution as soon as possible”.
At that point City were top of the league and the argument was about what the verdict meant for their titles. Joe Cole, by contrast, argued that what happens on the pitch should still count, as we reported last month. A month on, Neville’s question is different: not what City’s results are worth, but whether the case is now affecting the results themselves.
Redknapp: no challenger at all
Redknapp took a different angle after the Forest defeat. He did not dwell on the charges; he simply looked at the gap. “That is a sore one,” he said. “It gives you the feeling in terms of who can challenge Arsenal: I just don’t see one.”
“Right now, the one I would point to is Brighton – and I never thought I’d be saying that at the start of the season,” he added. “I don’t see anything other than Arsenal running away with it at this point. They are just so much better than everyone else in every single area.”
Weighing the two views
Neville’s theory is plausible but hard to prove. Three defeats is a short run, and Neville himself concedes it could be “a bad patch”. Redknapp’s view rests on firmer ground: Arsenal have won nine of their first 10 league games and conceded five goals, and on that evidence any side, distracted or not, would struggle to keep pace.
The two arguments also reinforce each other. If the case is weighing on City’s players, it is happening at the worst moment, with Arsenal showing no sign of slowing. The international break gives Maresca time to reset, but City’s next meeting with Arsenal, at the Emirates later this month, is the obvious test.
Our verdict
Neville is right that the case cannot be separated from City’s season; it has dominated the conversation for weeks. Whether it explains three defeats is another matter. The more immediate problem is the one Redknapp identified: Arsenal are setting a pace that leaves little room for any slump, whatever its cause.
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