“There’s none, and I can’t accept that. I’m getting really angry with it. They’re frightened to death to move out of their positions or do anything that might just make them make a mistake.”
Neville, whining star of a media empire built on criticising footballers, is now worried about the impact of criticism on footballers. If only we could find out who did this.
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Read MoreBut the core of Neville’s argument came afterwards: “This robotic nature of not leaving our positions, being micro-managed within an inch of our lives, not having any freedom to take a risk to go and try and win a football match. It’s becoming an illness in the game, a disease in the game.”
But we’re now on the other side of that hegemony, perhaps the most tactically diverse the top flight has been in a decade. Look from Andoni Iraola to Oliver Glasner to Nuno Espirito Santo. United and Manchester City are yet to establish their place in the post-Pep order, not least because one still employs him, hence afternoons like Sunday’s. This problem is generally far more pronounced among the most popular clubs.
Pep Guardiola and Ruben Amorim oversaw a forgettable Manchester derby (Photo: Getty)The prevailing sentiment is the Premier League has never been so boring, yet this season has included the second-most goals per game ever. There is no question the aggregate level has never been this high, even if the bottom three teams are the weakest they have ever been and the title race was non-existent. For six months it was led by the best team in Europe (Liverpool) but will now be won by the most mediocre excuse for champions this century (also Liverpool). As ever, something in the middle is true. It’s been fine. Good, even.
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One obvious trigger is the widespread underperformance of superclubs. Arsenal fans spend too much time outraged to ever appreciate being second. Chelsea supporters are bored witless by Enzo Maresca-ball and disconnected by the club’s overarching philosophy of trickle-down incompetence. Manchester City are so used to winning that fifth is almost incomprehensible. Manchester United: 13th. Tottenham Hotspur: 14th. That easily covers 60 per cent of Premier League fans, and explains some of the absent joy.
If you care about something less, you’ll find it more boring. Equally, if you watch too much of something, eventually it all just looks the same, reduced to its lowest common denominator of Mateo Kovacic passing sideways on a loop.
Before Neville rails against the decline of freedom in football again, he should first look in the mirror. Otherwise players are only going to become more “robotic”, and he might have to apologise for a lot more “drab” commentary.
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