Liverpool will be in a very dark place | Arsenal have had a tough week, but it isn’t a time to panic!

0:00Rob Hawthorne:And welcome along to another bonus edition of the Gary Neville podcast and Gary and I have been at Ellen Road today for the second time this week actually and we've been royally entertained haven't we by what's been on show here.

0:12Gary Neville:Yes we're Leeds' lucky charm I think.

0:16Rob Hawthorne:You want to convince them of that so you get a good reception here.

0:18Gary Neville:I said before on the podcast on Thursday evening that I wasn't really expecting much on Wednesday. I think Leeds have been a little bit like that this season and I thought they were really good on Wednesday night.

0:38Gary Neville:Today, they were up against it for large parts that game, but that'll be a more pleasing point in many ways than the actual three points that they got against Chelsea because they were dead and buried. in the second half after those two goals that Liverpool scored. And for them to come back and come back again, having Liverpool gone 3-2 up front is... Yeah, it's a remarkable week for them. I had Leeds going down. It's interesting, I think I've said this before, but I watched them on the first Monday night football of the season against Everton, and they actually won the game. But I thought they'll struggle.

1:11Gary Neville:They'll really struggle. They're a bit sort of weak, a bit flimsy. They didn't think they had any punch up front. It's a very different front three than we've seen the two or three that we've seen in the last few days playing for them. I think Wednesday night was the first time that I thought they'd been in with a chance. I didn't see the game at City last week, but people say they played well. But on Wednesday night, I thought, oh, that team could do something. What's impressed me most today about Leeds United is that we've seen two Leeds United, actually. We saw the pragmatic five at the back, two up front, go direct, play for free kicks and long throw-ins Leeds United, which played against Chelsea on Wednesday night and beat Chelsea up.

1:49Gary Neville:And then we've seen that play against Liverpool today and not quite work out in the sense that obviously once they give that goal away, you've got to change and you've got to be a bit more progressive in everything that you do. And Daniel Farker, I thought at 2-0 when he made those substitutions, I thought it was a little bit sort of going through the motions, protecting players really for, you know, they played three games in a week, not really expecting much to happen, but just probably rolling a dice a little bit and protecting players. but they then played and I said I think after the second goal they've turned into Real Madrid with those white shirts on because some of the football between Aronson and Nonto was really good and then obviously Stack scores that goal off the back of it so some really good football and taking the ball so very different you know direct one part of a game and then next minute you're playing passes so the ability to change and I know a couple of Leeds United fans and I said this on the podcast on Thursday they've been asking for a plan B all season they've now got two plans they can play in that last bit, which is the way in which I think they want to play more often under Daniel Farker, but they can also play that more physical way where they need to, and they'll need that a lot in this next few months.

2:53Gary Neville:So this has been an astonishing week. I said at the end of the game, this was the week that I thought would have cemented Leeds' place in the bottom three, to the point whereby they may have not got out of it again for the rest of the season because they could have been beaten really heavily this week. And I then said it's been the week of hope. It's been more than the week of hope. It's been a week of utter belief and confidence. If you go into that Leeds United dressing room there now, they must be absolutely buzzing and thinking, hang on a minute, we've just done ourselves proud against Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City, three of the best teams in the league.

3:25Gary Neville:And we can handle this. Why are we worried about anything else? So I think it's a massive week. And one more thing to mention on how big it is. I don't know how much we can pay attention to the rumours around the manager and the coach being very, very close to the edge and that will have pulled him right back. That is a, you know, I think if you're in the boardroom at Leeds United, you're thinking about what you've seen in this last week, you're thinking, well, okay, let's just hang back a little bit. If you had plans, then you maybe have to cancel them. So that may not have been the case, but there's a lot of room, there's a lot of noise and I think it's been a great week for the coach and well done to him because he's played a big part in it.

4:06Rob Hawthorne:There's an impressive spirit about them as well, isn't there? because with the way that Liverpool had let a 2-0 lead slip and then scored again, it kind of had echoes of what had happened at Manchester City, but they didn't give in to that. And similarly, in the game itself, Roden's head could have dropped after the error for the first goal. And despite the errors that led to goals, they still fought through it.

4:26Gary Neville:Yeah, and look, you can course play really good football at Leeds, but there is an identity that runs through the city of Leeds, through the people of Leeds, through the teams of Leeds going back decades. That means that whilst you might play football, like Harry Kuhl and Vaduka were wonderful football players, but when you came here, you knew you were in for a real fight and there was a tenacity to them on and off the pitch. And that has to be at the core of everything that Leeds do. It has to be. And I know that from playing here. If you came here for a nice game of football, you'd absolutely love that, but it shouldn't be nice here.

5:02Gary Neville:It should be hostile. It should be horrible. It should be intimidating. it should be fast it should be frantic it should also have good football of course and all those things need to come with it but this is very much the identity of the club so what we've seen in this last few days is a balance of good football physical play spirit fight energy and they've done really really well when I got my I think I mentioned this on Thursday as well when I got my programme a few months ago I thought who sent me to Leeds for twice in four days but actually it's one of the most I suppose two enjoyable games I've seen because it's a surprise We don't often see the big teams get beat by promoted teams.

5:38Gary Neville:It doesn't happen that often. And we saw Chelsea get beaten on Wednesday night. We've seen Liverpool disrupted today. So, yeah, I think that's always good for the Premier League, irrespective of whether it's good for Leeds. Obviously, it's good for Leeds as well, but it's good for the Premier League. We can never lose that competitiveness from top to bottom. We've seen it in the last four days, you know, really ring true. So, yeah, it's a good day for them. And it puts them in with a real shout of staying in this league. I think it's that bigger moment this week. long way to go can't get carried away you've not done anything yet but you have proven that you can live with three of the top sides in the division and beat them up and play football with them in the same sort of in the same game like the one with Liverpool today You talked about

6:17Rob Hawthorne:the manager's position which always seems to be under scrutiny and all we have to judge him on in the Premier League is what happened at Norwich is that perhaps a bit unfair because it was very different circumstances there they were taking a lot more of a cautious approach and this is a very different club to the one he was managing at Carrow Road

6:33Gary Neville:Yeah, I think when Norwich came up, they quite clearly said that they weren't going to bust the club for the Premier League status and go and spend£100 million and end up in trouble with players on massive wages. And that's completely understandable. But Leeds is different than Norwich. As big a club as Norwich are, this is different here. This is a massive expectation club. It's a huge city. It's a club that's got a history of winning trophies. so you've got a different level of expectation of belief around that what should happen and what should occur out on that pitch and where they should be I know they haven't been there for a number of years so when you're trying to build that as an owner of a football club which Leeds owners are they won't want to be in a position whereby they just drift back into the championship so you can see why this pressure and this noise builds around the coach but he's reacted and his players have responded for him and there's no doubt that those players are with him because they've seen him there at the end going round and celebrating a draw and celebrating the other night and doing a lap of honour with the Leeds fans going absolutely crazy in the stands.

7:38Gary Neville:That's important. There's no sort of dressing room being lost here.

7:42Rob Hawthorne:The big reaction he did have was in the second half against Manchester City when he switched to this back three system. Do you think that's form and fitness permitting what he has to stick with now?

7:51Gary Neville:I would stick with it if I was him knowing he can change to the sort of how many teams are Leeds going to out football in this division? Let's be clear. You know, the amount of football teams we've got in here that have got better players. So what they can do is stay in the game. What they've got to be here at Ellum Road is in the game with 15, 20 minutes to go and then start to get that crowd up. Crosses, tackles, shots on goal, corners. And then you might start to play some of your football, which we've seen today. But being solid, being solid, making sure that you're difficult to beat, staying in games, I think has to be a principle that teams that come up from the Championship have to get into them.

8:31Gary Neville:And I think we've seen that a little bit more this season. They've been a bit more physical, the likes of Sunderland and Burnley and Leeds. So we've seen so many teams over the last few years come up and try and take on Manchester City at Manchester City's game. And it's embarrassing to watch. So let's forget that. Let's have two styles of play. And Daniel Farker's doing his interview here now. He's smiling, you can see it beaming all across his face. It's amazing, you don't even need to hear the words, do you, to know whether a manager's had a good game or a bad game, you can tell. And he should be really proud, his players will deserve one or two days off to recover from what they've done this week.

9:05Gary Neville:But I think in terms of what he's got now, he's stumbled across the system, but it suits them with the two strikers, the wing-backs, the three centre-halves and the three in midfield. But he's also shown that they can play really well in that system that they've got and play some decent football. and Liverpool had switched. Liverpool had switched to a glass half empty mentality of seeing the game out by his substitutions he's made. So his momentum's gone, but he's trying to manage the game. And then as soon as you score a goal and you've got players on the pitch that Leeds have to play, you're in real business.

9:37Rob Hawthorne:So what do we make of Liverpool then? Because this is the third promoted club they've faced. They beat Burnley only with an injury time penalty. They only got a draw against Sunderland and perhaps were lucky not to lose it at the end. and they've only got a draw here, having at one stage been 2-0 ahead. Where are they at now? A confused team.

10:00Gary Neville:Confused by the fact there's still a lot of very good things that you see. Shape, sustaining attacks, certain individual performances. And then I think they've lost their way up front in the sense of what does a Liverpool goal look like? What are the patterns that you see? So I'm not quite seeing the repeated patterns and maybe I've just become used to seeing Salah on that right wing for so many years and obviously going back it's Firmino and Mane and then since then it's been different. But maybe I've just got used to that sort of type of player that plays on the profile. And I asked actually a few weeks ago that Liverpool do change and Sobber's life sort of goes to one side and they play a bit more narrow and they become a bit more difficult to beat.

10:41Gary Neville:So I think that's the right thing to do. But the mistakes that they make and the opportunities and encouragement that they give to teams when so much experience out there. I mean, Canate's challenge for that first one. So when he slides in and he sort of like goes towards Nanto, I go, ooh, because I just thought it was one of those where the centre-half slides. The player runs it too far and it goes out for a sort of a goal kick. But he slid towards the legs. Rather than slide that way and try and block,

11:12Rob Hawthorne:because Nanto's here,

11:13Gary Neville:he's basically slid towards him and I thought the ball had gone out initially but it hadn't done and then he sort of like hooks his leg a little bit and it's so clumsy it's so clumsy and all of a sudden the roof caves in on you at grounds like this Anfield's the same you can be 2-0 up at Anfield you can see the goal and all of a sudden you've got madness and that's Ellen Road as well and it comes from individual areas they were absolutely cruising in this game at 2-0 I thought they played a good first half defensively I thought the front three weren't good enough in the sense of Verts, Gakpo and Eketike they didn't get involved enough and the quality wasn't good enough so that was something to pick up on but if you said to me today about Liverpool what was the thing they had to do was compete with Leeds in that first half and nullify them and shut them up and keep the crowd quiet and get your game going and they did that so I thought it was a professional first half from Liverpool without anything happening spectacular up front and then all of a sudden you get the goal Leeds make a mistake.

12:13Gary Neville:Eketike's blistering pace, gets onto it, finishes, boom. Then I was asking them a lot in the first half to play balls earlier into the box. And I think Bradley did that. He played a great ball into the box. Again, Eketike, brave, gets in there. 2-0, game over. You've won the game. You don't need to win it again. And Arnaslott makes substitutions, telling his team, we've won this game. This is now about shape. It's now concentration. It's focus, game management. And they've not been capable of it again. And they've created their own problems. and even at 3-2 you were almost like something could happen, you don't trust them you can't trust them, they've lost trust now they've got a lot of credit in the bank these players and this manager over what's happened in the last 18 months with them winning the league but they're losing it rapidly and it's getting to the point where they're making mistake after mistake after mistake I thought Canate and Van Dijk had handled the two threats up front aerially really well in the first half the minute that Leeds started to bring on the little players the sort of players that were a little bit more tricky and a little bit more you know, Canati started to look a little bit all over the place so it's a really bad day for them really bad day and they got a lifeline by going in 3-2 I thought that Gravenbursch and Schaversle were the two best players and Schaversle gets the goal and you think, right, that's it but the nine minutes impacted them, didn't it?

13:33Gary Neville:I don't think they were happy with the nine minutes I don't know where nine minutes came from but you could see that they weren't confident in the nine minutes and just before the corner and maybe something Cara can look at on Monday night football they were screaming I don't know whether it was the goalkeeping coach or the set piece coach they were screaming him and Arna Slott down here at people before that goal goes in I don't know what it was at but something had unnerved them and they find themselves on the of a bad one it's a bad one again and they'll be dejected going back to Liverpool tonight on that coach which is only obviously an hour away.

14:08Gary Neville:Yeah, I think they'll be in a very dark place. I don't think they'll be in a good place at all.

14:14Rob Hawthorne:You know what football's like. You can get overreactions, and undoubtedly the questions about Arna Slott are going to resurface again. Do you think that is an overreaction?

14:23Gary Neville:Well, if you want overreactions, come and listen to the Gary Neville podcast. No, I can't entertain the idea of Arna Slott and talking about his job. That's just not for me. he won a title four months ago there's definitely a problem there's definitely I think an issue of settling this new team this group of players who've come together into the squad and what's happening with Salah what's happening with Izak what's happening with the defenders what's happening with the full backs there's lots of questions lots of questions and you can tell he's still trying to answer them and he's probably not going to answer them for a while yet it may even need something may need a transfer window just to sort of refine things again.

15:08Gary Neville:It might just need that big transfer window they've had. It might just need a couple to leave and a couple to come in just to sort of get to where he wants to. Because he's had a very steady ship, hasn't he, when he's first come in. He's not had the confusion of loads of players coming in. So he's got a stable group of players who know each other. He's then got this introduction into the dressing room of five or six players and trying to integrate them into a team with real excitement, and massive transfer fees. You know, Vert's 100 and odd million pounds. Isak, 100 and odd million pounds. Eketike, 80 million pounds.

15:38Gary Neville:You spent, what, 300 million, over 300 million on three players with real excitement. We were all saying Liverpool had unbelievable favourites for the league. I wasn't, I said Arsenal, but everyone, and I could see why everyone was. I'm not disagreeing with them, I'm not rewriting history. I think Liverpool, to be fair, were right up there with Arsenal to be title favourites. And, yeah, it's gone wrong. It's gone badly wrong, but, It isn't a time to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is a time for them just to sort of what will be knuckle down, work hard, think about what they need to do, refine that squad a little bit more, think about what they're doing in January, start to plan for next season with Arna Slott and what that looks like, because they've got a fantastic manager, in my opinion, and think about now how they rebuild that Liverpool defence, how they get that Liverpool midfield right, and most importantly, how is he going to get the best out of Verts and Isak?

16:30Gary Neville:versus, I said, very young, lots of potential. But it looks to me like, one, the settling in of the Premier League and what it is and the physicality of it and different things. But the coaching of less is more. Don't try and get on the ball as much. Don't try and run as much. Every time I watch him, I think the same thing. You run too much and you try and get on the ball too much. Now, that seems the antithesis of what a football player in a number 10. you should say get on the ball go and run mate no no no I want my number 10 close to my centre forward within 12 to 18 yards from goal and if possible when the ball goes wide I want him making runs in there with six yards I don't see him make one run within six yards of the goal where the goals get scored so there are a number of little things for me with Verts that I just look at and think you know the smart people in that Liverpool backroom staff they must be saying these things to him but I'm still not seeing it sort of what would be emerge on the pitch I'm still seeing the same sort of things happen with him where he's drifting back the way or he's running wide and he's always on the move and I think when players are always on the move they're easy to pick up it's when players are just sort of walking and then they move late and fast and also when he goes too deep he's in an area where most opposition teams will not care about him being there because he's not a he's not a De Bruyne who goes deep and then gets into this right channel and starts whipping crosses in from 40 yards away and you think you better get close to him.

18:00Gary Neville:He's not that player. So he has to be, for me, in tight areas, in and around Ekotika and Izak, five, six, seven, eight yards away from them, ten yards max, in and around the edge of the box so they're popping into each other, pop, pop, boom, boom. I can see that. I don't know what that is, what I've just done. But there's like a little bit, I can see him being there with a clever move, a little over, back to him, feedback to him, wall pass, shoot, I can see. But if he's not anywhere near his striker, and he's not building a relationship with his striker, it's not going to happen. He's got to get himself in the right areas.

18:30Gary Neville:I'm absolutely adamant and sure that this is his problem currently. Yes, settling in, but do yourself a favour. You need goals. The thing that will bring him out of... There's two things that will bring him out of his slump. The team winning and him winning. And him winning looks like scoring goals at£100 million. It's scoring goals and setting up goals. The only way he's going to do that is play within the 18-yard box and closer to goal and closer to his strike partner. That's it. End of. He's not going to do it by basically playing out on the left wing, right wing, or playing in central midfield alongside McAllister or Gravenbertsch or wherever he is.

19:05Gary Neville:So for me, really emphatic. I think that knowing that position from a point of view of we played two or put United with one off, Sir Alex Ferguson was a striker. People probably know that, but if they didn't, he was a striker. and he was obsessed with the two players up and always being close to each other to be able to just pivot off each other. So the one could run through, one could sort of be higher, then one could go through and opposite. He'd always be, he'd always combine. So yeah, that needs dealing with.

19:35Rob Hawthorne:With that in mind, could Salah and Eketike play together, do you think?

19:38Gary Neville:Salah and Eketike?

19:40Rob Hawthorne:Sorry, Isak and Eketike.

19:44Gary Neville:It doesn't look like it could happen on paper when you look at it. You think of them as being too similar, but I don't rule out the fact that I wouldn't like to play against a pair of them but they would need to work really hard at it and find some common ground between them about who's going to compromise at times and who's going to be the one that drops in maybe who's going to be the one that sort of maybe presses or whatever they're just people didn't think York and Cole could play together but there was a common ground between them that they found very early a relationship that they built so if there's a relationship there that's building off the pitch and they're supporting each other and they feel like that we can really make this work because they're both talented.