City's emphatic win after Liverpool's 'nothing' performance | Arsenal still favourites for title over Pep's 'imperfect' City

0:00Welcome, everybody. Gary Neville is back from the USA and here is the newest edition of his podcast from the Etihad Stadium, where Manchester City have beaten Liverpool 3-0. They've beaten them, Gary, thoroughly.

0:12Gary Neville:Yes, emphatic. A really good day for Manchester City. And look, before the game, I don't think there was anybody that was walking into the stadium with any great knowledge of what the score was going to be. I think I've just seen Michael Richards after the game saying that he was intrigued before the game. I think I was something similar. I actually thought and said that Liverpool, I fancied Liverpool just to sort of nick it. I thought they'd have too much for City up front. I thought that Liverpool's centre-backs would handle Haaland. But it was a really bad day for Liverpool. We'll come on to that shortly.

0:41Gary Neville:I think the first thing to start on today is Pep Guardiola's 1 ,000th game. I think I remember, I think I scored in Stralic's, Ferguson's 1 ,000th game at Manchester United. You did Champions League game, Lyon. Yeah, I scored. That's an incredible achievement, eh? You just think about greatness. Pep Guardiola is a great, great manager. 1 ,000 games, I think you said, did he say 716? Wins, yeah. Wins, which is 71 % win rate, which is just obscene. And this isn't his greatest team or his best team that he's had in those 1 ,000 games. You think about the team he had at Barcelona, which is probably the greatest team of all time, and then the treble-winning team here and the title-winning teams.

1:25Gary Neville:But what his team have done today, is give them a glimmer of hope going into November transfer, sorry, November international break. They're four points off Arsenal. They've got experience. They've got a few players who've been around the block and they've got a manager who knows how to win. And if I was Manchester City right now, I'm sure Pep Guardiola knows how to win titles more than any of us. He'll be just thinking, let me hang on Mikel Arteta's shoulder, come Mark, let me be close enough to him to apply that pressure. He's the one you wouldn't want near you. And today for me, the whole fixture was around who's going to emerge, who's going to come out of this match thinking that they can challenge Arsenal, who's going to be the team that think they can get close enough to them.

2:07Gary Neville:And I thought it would be Liverpool. I think City have been inconsistent, but I was badly wrong. And Pep Guardiola's thousandth game was a really good one for him and his team. So if you say, and most people agree that this isn't his kind of premium team. No, it's not. I mean, how do you categorise them? There isn't a David Silva, there isn't Kevin De Bruyne, there isn't a Guerrero Nenny, there isn't a Yaya Toure, all of these great, great players he's had. How do you sum up what this team actually is? I mean, it's a team I actually like watching. I mean, it's imperfect. It's teams that you've seen, particularly here and at Barcelona, were like clockwork.

2:45Gary Neville:I mean, it's very difficult to maintain what Pep Guardiola was achieving at this club and at Barcelona, because I didn't see as much of his football in Germany, so I'm not going to comment on Bayern Munich. But you're talking about some of the most beautiful football that you'll ever see, to the point of, like, you're coming to games knowing the outcome. Whereas when I watch City now, you're not quite sure of what's going to happen today, being a perfect example. But they are imperfect. They're a lot more physical. They've got Haaland up front, who is devastating. But again, he's not smooth in the way in which he plays, but he's an absolutely brilliant player.

3:21Gary Neville:Nico Gonzalez in midfield. I mean, Bernardo Silva and Foden are still playing great football, but they're very different. They're very different in terms of they're not as methodical in terms of their sort of combinations and passes and the way in which they link. They're not as good playing out from the back through their goalkeeper or their back four, but they're still a very good side. And it feels like a team that, you know, Pep Guardiola is staying here to build another great side. And I don't quite think they're there. but what they do have is some players, you look through the spine of the team in Gvardiol and Stones, Diaz, Rodri, Foden, Bernardo, Silva and Haaland and the goalkeeper who know how to win.

4:00Gary Neville:So if they can keep those players together and somehow keep some momentum going and get close, they're going to be really, really dangerous towards the end just through their experience. But it is an imperfect team. It's a team that you don't feel is as consistent and reliable as the one that they've had previously. And that's understandable. You'll never see me criticise Manchester City over this period because through the period I was at United for 20 years, there were two or three seasons where you needed a transition to be able to build another side. And Sir Alex Ferguson did that. And when you keep a manager for so long, we were conditioned about 10, 15 years ago to say you couldn't keep a manager anymore for a period of time and have success like it happened with Arsene Wenger, Sir Alex Ferguson, Bill Shankly, Bob Paisley.

4:44Gary Neville:But you can. You can. Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, even Mikel Arteta. I mean, he's not had success yet, but he's been there for five or six seasons. So it does prove that if you have consistency and a great manager, you can deliver, you know, continual success. And look, this is going to be interesting in this next six months of what happens with City. I would say there's still quite a lot of work to do to convince me that they're going to win a title. I think Arsenal are the better team, but they're the one team that I wouldn't want and the one manager that I wouldn't want on my shoulder going in down the back straight.

5:15Just a quick word, if you would, on Jeremy Doku, who you made your man of the match today. He's a beautiful, sort of glitzy player, isn't he? Do you think there's substance there? Oh, steady. You can't hear me. There's a lot of viewers who prefer that option. But would you say he has substance to go with that glitz?

5:36Gary Neville:Yeah, he's one of those players that I would describe as being a nightmare to play against, but probably a nightmare to play with. Because you don't know what he's going to do. he sometimes holds the ball when he should release it he sometimes releases the ball when he should hold it he's inconsistent with his final cross or his pass or his shot but you can never ever doubt his courage and you think about the kid in the street that basically gets told to go and dribble and take players on that's what I love about Doku and today I thought he was devastating in that game and again where Liverpool's tactic was to try and sit deep be compact be narrow he's perfect because he does have the ability to unlock a defence that's deep lying, who's got lots of players behind the ball, take not just one player on one-on-one, he can take two on and slip through the middle of them and he did that a few times today.

6:21Gary Neville:I thought it was absolutely brilliant to watch and I didn't think Conor Bradley did badly against him. I didn't think Conor Bradley had a bad day, I thought he was one of Liverpool's better players but I just thought Doku today was sensational, he was a difference maker and yeah, well done to him and if he can add that consistency and it's usually the case that wingers are the most inconsistent players on the pitch because they have the most difficult job to try and sort of do things that are different and win your team the game. So you can add a bit more consistency and reliability to his decision-making in the final third and his execution of the pass or the cross.

6:55Gary Neville:He's got a great chance of becoming a top winger in the world. He just has to improve his intelligence and understanding of the game and, like I say, be more predictable to his teammates and still be as unpredictable to the opposition. I do want to put a special mention for Mateus Nunes, the right-back. I thought and have thought he's a real weakness for City. Every time I see Nunes at right-back, and because Nico O 'Reilly, he's excellent Nico O 'Reilly, but because he's young at left-back, you sometimes feel that City's back floor is just going to be more vulnerable. But Nunes has done a really good job out there today.

7:30Gary Neville:In fact, if you said to me, you know, name a second player for City on the pitch, I think he'd probably be out there in terms of sort of where I would place him. I thought he was really, really good today. And I think we're quick sometimes in our positions to say that a player isn't at the level. And I'm sure City fans have looked at it and thought, well, is he good enough? Why is he playing right back? We signed him as a midfield player. But he's doing a good job out there. And certainly today I thought he was excellent. And I think he deserves a mention. OK, so Liverpool, they beat Villa, they beat Real Madrid.

8:00There was a sense that all was well again. What's not well?

8:05Gary Neville:I think of all the games that they've had in the last month or six weeks when they've sort of been dropping points and losing matches, I would say that is a massive worry today for Liverpool fans watching that game. And I think Arna Slott will be looking at that game, particularly the first half, and think that's nothing. That's a nothing of a performance. And I was trying to get my head around where it was because just five, six minutes before half-time, it came to me that City had this game by the scruff of the neck. Go and get your second because this lot have gone. Their legs had gone. It was almost as if they couldn't get up the pitch.

8:36Gary Neville:They couldn't move. They were walking. And you never, ever accuse a Liverpool team in this last five, ten years of throwing the towel in. They didn't throw the towel in today by any stretch of the imagination, but physically and mentally they looked beaten. Now, look, it has been a difficult week for them. They have had Villa. They have had Real Madrid. I get it. But today was such a big game. And to come out there and lack confidence, play so passively. They kept playing back the way. They kept Canate, kept playing back to his goalkeeper. Canate kept playing back to other players. I mean, Canate, after about 10, 15 minutes, I was like, how many touches has Canate had?

9:15Gary Neville:I went, obviously, pressed my button here, you will have heard me. And he'd had 24, 25 touches. And I said this about a year ago, you cannot, it's not a tactic to let your centre-back have the ball the most in the team. Now, obviously, if it's Van Dijk, you know, we know he can pass, but Haaland was shutting Van Dijk off. They were letting Canati have the ball and it was almost as if they had no idea, Liverpool, about how to play through. Their tempo in the game was nothing. They looked physically really, really well short in the game. They looked physically short in terms of their running, physically short in terms of actually just getting out-muscled.

9:49Gary Neville:I thought Virts in particular, I thought it was a really bad day for him. We've been tiptoeing around him, haven't we, for a few months around the fact that he's young, he's coming to a new country but he's£120 million. you're going to have to stand up soon. I mean, he's obviously got something. He's a really good player. He's technically fantastic, but he's been mauled out there today by Nunes and by others. He's been chucked around the pitch and didn't deliver in the quality side of things as well. So his performance was a real worry. But physically, I'd be worried if I was Arneslot looking at that team.

10:21Gary Neville:There's a few of them look like they can't run. And I always think that when you go on a losing streak, you start to doubt everything. And that's wrong, because obviously there's some excellent players out there with great attitude. So it's not a time to sort of throw the baby out with the bathwater here. But Arnazslaught's going to need this next week just to sort of reflect, look at what he's got, look at how he sort of sets up post-international break and think about how he fixes the problems, both going forward and in defence. They look terrible at the back. I thought they got messed around today.

10:51Gary Neville:I thought it looked like City could score. Lots of goals. They weren't good enough up front. The combinations weren't there. Salah isn't in great form. Wurz is a problem let's be clear let's just call it as it is it's an issue you know he's 120 million quid and he's to be fair I said a few weeks ago about Kyrgyz that he looks like a little boy out there today I thought Wurz looked like a little boy and that can't be the case you know he's a he's a German international of great standing and he looks well short in respect of what he'd expect in a top physical Premier League match so they've got to get him up to speed they've got to get that sort of little bit of tenacity into him and that little bit of something that means that he'll start to get into form.

11:31Gary Neville:Because what they have to do is stick with him and persist. But they've got to find a way to get the best out of him. You've got Eketike, it was challenging for him today. I don't think he got the service. Izak sat on the bench and obviously didn't come on. Yeah, problems all over the place. And he's got to identify where. Can they still be a part of it, top end? I'm going to say yes, just because I think that if it clicked, something could happen. They've got basically firecrackers in that dressing room. They've got world-class players. and they've got big characters. You know, Alisson, Van Dijk, Salah are huge characters.

12:03Gary Neville:You know, they're Premier League greats. So if they can just pull it together with the manager who's obviously had a great first season and the young ones can start to gain some confidence, I'd put Robinson as well in terms of the experience that he's got on McAllister. It's that second band of players who've got experience around, you know, Van Dijk, Alisson and Salah. But at the moment, there is a worry. And today, it looked like a team in the first half that physically and mentally was short. but another thing that, and sometimes it can happen, it looked to me like they concentrated, and I might be completely wrong, because how would I know what they've worked on in the last 24, 48 hours?

12:35Gary Neville:It felt to me like sometimes you can play a game where you've thought so much about how to stop the opposition that you forget about one of the most important things as a top club going away from home in a big game is you've got to play. You've got to take the ball. You've got a rhythm in your passing. You've got to demonstrate authority. when you're in playing that first 5-10 minutes away from home in a big game you're sending a message in that first 5-10 minutes to the opposition players in the ground, the stadium, the 50-60 ,000 people in here that we are ready to play and come and take you on at your own game and be able to sort of stand up and be counted Liverpool shrunk I felt in that game in the first half they shrunk and I could never accuse them of that I thought it was a really, really poor performance It was one of the worst that I've seen from a Liverpool team for a long, long time in terms of them being sort of insular and sort of just a little bit scared, but a little bit sort of like they didn't know what to do.

13:33Gary Neville:And yeah, I think it was a worry. Second half, they got a little bit better. But do you always get a little bit better? I actually would have expected to see substitutions at half time. I think it was worthy of two or three of them coming off and doing, you know, but Arna Slott's, you know, very experienced. I could understand why he maybe said to the players that are out there first half, get out there and give me a better 10, 15 minutes than that or else I'll make changes. And he did that. But yeah, the third goal was a killer for them. They might point towards that Van Dijk header in the first half.

14:03Gary Neville:I thought it definitely should have been a goal. But I think from what Van Dijk just said on here, he said, I don't want to really talk about it. And I think that's the right approach. When you've lost 3-0 and you've been well beaten, don't whinge about a refereeing decision. But I do think it would have made a difference. and I do think it was definitely a goal. I don't think it affected Donnarumma at all where Robertson was. So they maybe feel hard done to with that, but they need to basically go and have a good look at themselves because they've hit high standards, that team, and a group of players who know how to win things and they'll know that they're nowhere near at the moment.

14:38Arsenal are still top of the league. I was at Sandler last night, Gary, and I'd forgotten, haven't been there for nine years. what a fabulous thing they've got there it's a great football stadium their people are so invested in that team they were terrific and they took points from Arsenal I presume you saw most of the action

14:57Gary Neville:I saw most of it before I went and watched Richard Ashcroft and I didn't see the final goal but I can imagine, obviously I've seen it since

15:07Gary Neville:brilliant for Sunderland I thought it would be awkward for Arsenal I don't think there's any shame whatsoever in Arsenal drawing that game I think that you'll always feel that when you're winning as a big club and then a team equalises against you, it's a sucker punch. You feel like it's a killer for you. But you're not going to have it all your own way during a season. They've been sensational Arsenal in this last six to eight weeks. But that was a game that always had a little bit of a sort of banana skin around it. It just felt that way. Sunderland, the way in which they set up defensively, they're very well organised.

15:38Gary Neville:They've got a real threat going forward. They've got a momentum in the stadium. The fans are with them. They're back in the Premier League. And, you know, I remember going up to Sunderland. I remember going to Roker Park and playing, let alone the Stadium of Light. And, you know, when it's rocking up there, it truly does rock. And they've done brilliantly this season. The first game of the season, I was massively impressed with them in that performance against West Ham. And I know West Ham have had a challenge at the start of this season. But the right sort of attributes, the right sort of principles of a team coming up, being hard to beat, being physical, running forward with real sort of aggression and sort of meaning and passion and getting balls into the box and filling the box, things that I just think are simple things, a team coming up from the Championship.

16:18Gary Neville:We've seen some right nonsense over this last few years of players playing out from the back and trying to be sort of Pep Guardiola's Manchester City when they've come out of the Championship. It's just impossible to play football at that level like Manchester City can do. So I'm glad that we're seeing what we're seeing from Leeds and from Burnley and from Sunderland, which is a more pragmatic style, but I think equally as effective and more, I actually think, to be fair, when you see a team play like that, I really admire it and love watching it. And from an Arsenal point of view, acknowledging obviously that it's irritating to say the least to concede in stoppage time.

16:50Gary Neville:Very. Would you go so far as to say that actually that point at Sunderland isn't too bad? You know, that's a really hard place to go. No, I'm not sat there at all watching Arsenal get a point there at Sunderland yesterday and thinking in any way, shape or form that I'm surprised. In fact, in my predictions earlier on in the week on the podcast, I said I thought it would be a draw. so I'm not sort of rewriting history after the game. I genuinely thought this could just be a game that might just catch them out a little bit and cause them a problem and they've conceded two goals. They've conceded a goal in the last minute.

17:24Gary Neville:That'll hurt them because they're a proud team defensively and they're a great side defensively but they've got to accept that then just, you know, it's a Premier League, it's a marathon, not a sprint and there are going to be some bumps along the way and I just think that was one of the bumps that you get. I don't, you know, the main thing is when you get a bump like that, Obviously, they're not going to be able to get straight back on the bike because obviously they've got an international break. But I wouldn't be in any way, shape or form putting that down to anything other than what normally happens in a Premier League season.

17:51Gary Neville:That thing that you would say to yourself is, no, did you expect to win every single match? No, no team does that. Manchester City at their very best haven't gone through a season winning every single match. You're bound to drop points. You are going to lose games and drop points, you know, ordinarily. And that's what's happened. but I wouldn't be screaming and shouting if I was an Arsenal fan and I know they're not and I certainly wouldn't be sort of screaming and shouting if I was an Arsenal player or coach and I know they're not either because Mikel Arteta will be, no, they'll be really disappointed because it'll just give you that, when you lose a game like that, when you draw a game like that with a goal in the last minute, it's like having a cloud over your head.

18:28Gary Neville:You try and forget about it in the next 24, 48 hours but it just comes back and you think of it and it just gives you a bit of a sickly feeling but it's normal. That's what happens to teams that are proud, that are used to winning and want to win a league. They should feel like that, but it's important that when they come back in a couple of weeks, they get after that three points and win the next game. The other big winners at the top end this weekend, a couple of obviously high-profile draws, but Chelsea got a win. They had Wolves at home, and Wolves are the story club this weekend. They've got rid of winning manager.

18:59They had a caretaker in charge yesterday, and Rob Edwards has chosen to cash in a promotion race with Middlesbrough for a relegation scrap with Wolves, which is his club. You know, he lives locally, he has family. You can see all sorts of emotional attachments, but it's an interesting career choice. What's your take on all of that?

19:19Gary Neville:I mean, that's the thing really, isn't it, for Rob Edwards, that he's local to Wolves. It's the probably dream job for him and he wouldn't have wanted to hand his notice in at Middlesbrough and exit there lightly. I mean, Middlesbrough will be absolutely furious and they'll feel badly let down, the Middlesbrough fans. It's a great club that I'd like to see back in the Premier League at some point in the future because of just generally my memories of playing up there and knowing how those great Brazilian players, the other players that they had, you know, Gazza and Murs and all the others. So for me, I want to see Middlesbrough back in the Premier League, but I can see why Rob Edwards has jumped ship.

19:54Gary Neville:He probably will say when he finally speaks and he is appointed that this is the only job that he would have done so and he'll be apologetic, he'll feel like he's letting you know, sometimes in life you're making a decision which is right for you and your family and what you need and you have to look after number one. I know people talk about loyalty and loyalty is very important. I stand by it, trust and loyalty but if you get an opportunity for something that's so brilliant for your life and for your family then not many people would turn that down. I think if Middlesbrough fans can probably try and understand that as much as it won't help them right now get over the disappointment and the feeling of being let down I think they'll probably recognise that Rob Edwards is a Wolves fan and if someone was offered the Middlesbrough job and it was their dream job they'd expect that person to leave and go and take it and they wouldn't think anything of it and of course he gave us a lot of fun at Luton for a while didn't he?

20:45He did He engendered something there was a spirit about him he made that sort of a family club

20:49Gary Neville:It's one of the great achievements Luton getting to the Premier League so look I mean have Middlesbrough sorry have Wolves appointed him in the no team I don't think have ever stayed up from the position that Wolves are currently in. It's an awful start to the season. They look well short. So are they planning already for what could be an inevitable relegation? I know that they'll say all the right things, but yeah, it's a big job for him to go there and try and turn that round. And maybe they're preparing for what would be a championship next year, which, you know, you get the parachute payments and they want obviously someone who knows the championship to be able to take them back up.