When City played PSG in the last 8 of the CL two years ago the coverage on BT Sport was a disgrace and City (and many non-City) fans were justifiably outraged by pundits keen to see a French triumph and eager to pander to the prejudices of fans of City's rivals. Gary Neville has never been this kind of pundit. He is not impartial and he makes no secret of his bias: he spent his entire career at the rags and he wants the rags to win. If, however, he isn't impartial he is objective and objectivity is the quality required above all others of a pundit. He is certainly not an uncritical admirer of City but his analyses are always serious and sincere, never malicious.
On Sunday he made certain comments which have upset a number of bluemooners:-
1. Some of us believe that he was jumping to Mourinho's side and saying that City are masters of the black arts of tactical fouling, which is an integral part of our game. This is an extreme way of stating matters. Neville was simply pointing out that City players read the game and are prepared to snuff out situations before they develop by a trip or body check. Neville actually said "I think this is good" and said that all great teams did it. We point out regularly that sides try to do this to us, and Neville showed a couple of clips of us in action. I think Fernandinho excels at it. It's cheating if that's how we wish to describe it - but Neville never says that.
2. Games such as Sunday's do not help City in the CL. Neville's point here is that uncompetitive leagues where one team is dominant don't prepare teams well for competition against the best teams in the CL. He argued that this had worked against other English teams, notably his own United, in the past. We can see this in other countries, notably France where PSG have little competition, very few, if any, matches where they have to dig deep and ten can't step up in the CL - as happened again last night. I'll point out that before we played them in 2016 our press tried to alarm us by reporting that PSG had warmed up for City with a superb 6 goal demolition of a Ligue 1 rival. What they did not report was that the rival was EA Guincamp - the team of a Breton town with a population now of just over 7000 (lower now than at any time since the 1860s). Hardly the preparation needed for a tough CL quarter final!
3. His other statement was a criticism of Chelsea, not City. He felt they were a disgrace because they never really tried to win. I disagree with him but I think he's right to believe it isn't healthy for English football when the reigning champions cannot manage a shot on target in 95 minutes against the side top of the league. He never suggested any of the rather eccentric conspiracy theories doing the rounds and he never entertained any of the nonsense Eamonn Dunphy has spouted, that City were a disgrace for trying to humiliate the defending champions by playing "keep ball" in the seccond half!
