1 week Ago By George-simms
“Where’s the freedom in that football match?” spits Gary Neville, Sky Sports version, after a predictable anaesthetic of a Manchester derby. “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.”Relax, now! Chill out, or else! Take the handbrake off, or I’ll ram it down your throat! If Neville carries on like that for too long he might put the entire sports psychology industry out of a job. The high priest of footballing nostalgia has solved the future.
if(window.adverts) { window.adverts.
addToArray({"pos": "inread-hb-ros-inews"}); }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.The Premier League’s leading footballers do not solely underperform out of some paralysing fear of the Pod God’s milquetoast proclamations, but the rise of “race to the bottom” punditry is unquestionably a factor.
There’s only so many times Manchester United’s impressionable cast of vain and ambitious 20-somethings can hear about their inherent incompetence on international television before they start to believe it’s real.#color-context-related-article-3627169 {--inews-color-primary: #8BC419;--inews-color-secondary: #F6FBED;--inews-color-tertiary: #8BC419;} Read Next square FOOTBALL Phil Foden was Man City's Roy of the Rovers - now he's just Roy CropperRead 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.
”The death of individualism in elite football has long been theorised, and there’s something to it. Pep Guardiola is often blamed, but really he just created a tactical blueprint based on probabilities. Everyone else ran the same numbers and found the same solutions.
That’s how Russell Martin ended up using Jack Stephens and Jan Bednarek as ball distributors in a high line, which was probably the spiritual death of Pepification. It even compromised the mothership.if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_mobile_l1"}); }if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l1"}); }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)One explanation is the increased attention and pressure, more money and eyeballs and expectation. Another is that we simply watch more of United, City, Arsenal and Chelsea, probably the four least interesting Premier League clubs functionally or stylistically outside the bottom four or five. Only four primetime “Super Sunday” matches this season have not included one of those sides.
If you only watch the most robotic sides, you’ll assume all football is robotic.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.But that doesn’t mean the wider sense of fan disenfranchisement isn’t real, even if its causes are more complex.#color-context-related-article-3624178 {--inews-color-primary: #8BC419;--inews-color-secondary: #F6FBED;--inews-color-tertiary: #8BC419;} Read Next square FOOTBALL Kevin De Bruyne confirms Man City exit in emotional message to fansRead MoreOne 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.
Then there’s state ownership, rising ticket prices and the ostracism of season-ticket holders and pensioners, a game unwilling to stop growing unless everyone in the world has attended a Premier League match. Social media has made fandom a competitive sport of its own and executives find novel ways to tell fans they don’t care about them every day. This is emotionally and morally exhausting, and a lot of the distanced sentiment is just footballing burnout.
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.if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_mobile_l2"}); }if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l2"}); }And so perhaps modern football just gets the pundits it deserves.
Ruben Amorim summed it up quite nicely: “I understand that Gary Neville is critical about everything.” If you’re angry about everything, you’re angry about nothing. You just like shouting.
Or more to the point, you get paid to like shouting. And we haven’t even mentioned Roy Keane.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..
