Gary Neville has told Mikel Arteta his Arsenal side must stop doing one particular thing if they hope to win the Premier League title. The Gunners fought from two goals down to beat Bournemouth with a dramatic second half comeback to keep the gap at the top at five points after Manchester City's win at Newcastle earlier in the day.
Since the resumption of the season following the World Cup, Arsenal's title ambitions have been pushed to the limit and minus a slight blip, they have answered those difficulties emphatically. Since January 22, Arsenal have won three Premier League games 3-2 with a last-minute winner being scored in all of those clashes against Manchester United, Aston Villa and now Bournemouth.
While all of those games have proven Arsenal's desire to fight until the very last second, Neville has pointed out that the Gunners defensive issues could be a major problem.
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Speaking on The Gary Neville podcast, via Metro, he said: "Man City did their job [against Newcastle] and then you expect Arsenal to go and comfortably win. The fact that they’ve won in that way gives them that extra spirit and extra momentum, because it is a game you’d expect them to win 2-0 or 3-0 just because Bournemouth are second from bottom.
"But they made it really difficult for themselves. They’ve got a real momentum, there’s a spirit building, the fans are with them, I would say to them they’ve got to stop conceding goals.
"It sounds like a really simple thing to say but when you concede goals on a run-in it’s really tough and they’ve conceded two against Bournemouth, they’ve conceded against Brentford, they’ve conceded against United, Villa, City. They’ve conceded quite a few goals, I think 11 in the last eight games.
"So they just need to manage that a little bit because I think they’ve got 12 games to go now. City still aren’t playing at their fluent best. We’ve got a hell of a title race."
Neville has frequently weighed in on the title race, backing Manchester City throughout the season despite Arsenal restoring their five-point gap at the top after winning their game in hand against Everton close to a fortnight ago. Asked if he is still refusing to change his mind that City will win the title, Neville continued: "No, I made my prediction at the start of the season and I’m not going to change my opinion of Manchester City.
"The reason I’ve not turned on Jurgen Klopp is because what you do over a period of five or six years you build up a trust and you earn the right to be thought of in a way that you’re a winner and you don’t write him off. I would never write off a Jurgen Klopp team and say that’s him done at Liverpool, he’s finished.
"Arsenal haven’t proven to me that they can handle the last 10 games of a run-in. They haven’t proven that to me. And when they do, I’ll take my hat off to them and say congratulations."
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