Why Gary Neville has crossed the line with his edgy punditry on Kevin De Bruyne, writes IAN LADYMAN
A few years ago, Sky TV invited Dominic Calvert-Lewin on to their Monday night football show to help Gary Neville with his analysis of that night’s Everton game. Without their injured centre forward to help them, Everton lost.
It was good TV but I subsequently suggested to Neville that, back in the day, such a thing would never have been tolerated by Sir Alex Ferguson and the big beasts of the Manchester United dressing room. Injured United players would have been expected to be resting at home rather than standing in TV studios in their best designer clothes.
‘Yes, you are right it wouldn’t have happened,’ Neville said. ‘But that was fifteen years ago. Times change.’
Maybe he had a point but I wasn’t sure then and I am not sure now. However, one thing that doesn’t change in football is the sanctity and privacy of the dressing room. Neville was perhaps the fiercest protector of that during his playing days that I have ever known. He did what he thought was right for his team and his club and to hell with everybody else. It could be annoying for somebody like me at the time but, now we are some years removed from it, there is something understandable about it all.
Which is one of the reasons it was interesting to hear Neville state with apparent confidence on Sky last weekend that Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola had a personal problem with his midfielder Kevin de Bruyne. ‘Something is definitely going on in the dressing room,’ said Neville.
Jamie Carragher was part of that conversation, too, while the topic was also discussed by Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer and Micah Richards on the Rest is Football podcast. ‘It looks to me like there is some kind of rift,’ said Richards.
Gary Neville suggested that Pep Guardiola had fallen out with Kevin De Bruyne after the Belgian was left out of Manchester City’s starting XI against Liverpool
De Bruyne has been eased back into the starting line-up after a series of serious injuries
A football coach can suffer lots of indignities, reversals and disappointments. Bad results, poor decisions, imperfect utterances and behaviours. But once he starts to fall out with his big players then his problems take on an entirely different dimension. Quite often it’s the first step on the road to the door.
No surprise, then, that Guardiola rebutted Neville’s comments at the earliest opportunity. City were upset. Something like that could not be allowed to take root in truth. De Bruyne also addressed it after City finally won a game of football, against Nottingham Forest on Wednesday.
‘I don’t know where people get the issue part from,’ said the Belgian. ‘There has never been one between me and Pep.’
Once upon a time reporters and TV companies used to get thrown out of United for things like this. It happened to me. Thankfully we have all grown up a bit since then but the onus on journalists to get things right remains the same and that extends to those ex-players sitting in TV studios before and after matches.
Neville has been part of the advancement of standards at Sky over the last decade that has seen TV coverage of the national sport break new ground. He remains the most listenable and watchable pundit in the country.
But here he has stepped the wrong side of the line and others have followed without pause. Strong opinion, insight and analysis are one thing but when that merges and blurs into assumed fact then it’s a different thing altogether.
For all that illegal streams and YouTube clips have cut in to their audience, Sky’s direct and indirect reach remains vast. In some ways, the likes of Neville, Carragher and Roy Keane are as much a part of the Premier League landscape now as they were when they were playing. The things they say shoot round the globe in an instant.
And Sky’s relationship with the top flight’s 20 clubs is key to much of this. Sky pay a chunk of the money that in part props up our game and in return demand the access to players and managers that enables their own financial cogs to turn.
Former Premier League stars are as much a part of the league’s landscape as they were during their playing days
Returning to Neville once again, he was recently critical on his own Stick to Football podcast of Marcus Rashford’s decision to spend some time in America. Then, when Sky chose him as their man to interview new United manager Ruben Amorim for the first time on his arrival at Old Trafford, he was able to follow up and ask him about it. And so the news cycle turns.
Neville thinks about his punditry and it is to be hoped others do too. To this day he remains uncomfortable about something he once said about former Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius. ‘I went too far,’ he said.
On De Bruyne and his relationship status with his manager, he may have pause to think too. One thing is for sure. If something similar at happened across town a decade or so ago, we would all have been choking on red mist for weeks.
Mo Salah no longer needs to remind us
Watching Mo Salah score two goals and poke another shot against the post after one of those unfathomable jinking runs at Newcastle on Wednesday was to be reminded of his value to Liverpool.
And it’s really obvious, his value. It could not be more obvious if he carried it round Merseyside on one of those old-fashioned sandwich boards.
So he no longer needs to remind us. Salah has made his point three times in interviews after matches this season. Once at Manchester United, once at Southampton and then again at Anfield after last Sunday’s win over Manchester City.
It’s been great for TV stations, websites and newspapers. Great quotes never grow old. But how much good is Salah’s running commentary on his contract frustrations doing Liverpool? How much is it helping his new manager Arne Slot as he tries to win a league title in his debut season? How much is it helping his team-mates?
For all that Salah continues to drive Liverpool forwards on the field, his sudden and not co-incidental fondness for media interviews may yet reach a point where it starts to do the opposite.
In every disagreement, there are two sides. If Liverpool are provoked by Salah’s persistent prodding in to giving theirs then we will have a little war on our hands. And that could blow up in everyone’s face. Chelsea and Arsenal can only watch and hope.
Mo Salah continued his superb run of form with a brace and an assist in Liverpool’s 3-3 draw with Newcastle on Wednesday night
Winner stays on at London Stadium
West Ham’s home game with Wolves on Monday has a ‘lose and you are sacked’ look about it and having watched the latter fall at Everton on Wednesday I do fear for Gary O’Neill.
Julen Lopetegui job at West Ham is hanging by a thread after his side lost 3-1 to newly-promoted Leicester on Tuesday night
Gary O’Neil could also imminently get the sack after his Wolves side stayed in 19th place following a 4-0 defeat by Everton
The statistics suggest his Wolves team can’t defend – they’ve conceded six more than Southampton!! – and now I have seen it with my own eyes.
As for Julen Lopetegui at West Ham, the situation feels more nuanced. In losing 3-1 at Leicester on Monday they had 31 shots yet the bloke they hired to score goals in the summer is only just back from injury.
West Ham paid £27m to sign Niclas Fullkrug from Borussia Dortmund. He is a German international who played in last season’s Champions League final. His also a traditional number nine, a target man, which suggests Lopetegui has a certain way of playing in mind.
Injuries mean Fullkrug has played only 74 minutes of league football so far. But he is fit now. So surely we should see how all that plays out before hurrying Lopetegui out of the door?
