Gary Neville says Arsenal must balance their emotions ahead of a crucial Premier League title showdown with Manchester City next Sunday, live on Sky Sports.

In another dramatic twist in the title race, the Gunners lost 2-1 to Bournemouth in the Saturday lunchtime kick-off, opening the door for Pep Guardiola’s side to close the nine-point gap even further.

It was a chance they took with both hands too, resoundingly beating Chelsea 3-0 to cut Arsenal’s lead to six points with the pair set to meet at the Etihad next weekend in what is being billed as a title-defining match.

Man City will have a week to prepare for the game, while Arsenal play their Champions League quarter-final second leg at home to Sporting Lisbon on Wednesday as they look to reach the competition’s final four.

However, it is a game that Neville thinks will be beneficial to the Gunners as they look to bounce back from the Bournemouth defeat, and explains on The Gary Neville Podcast why a first title win in 22 years was never going to come easy.

‘Arsenal must balance emotion and swim against the tide this week’

“I said a few months ago that Arsenal have to win this title from the position that they’re in and I still believe they have to because it’s a long road back at the end of the season. If they don’t win it this year, it will really be traumatic.

“We know the build-up to the game next week, what the narrative is going to be against Arsenal – that Man City are going to catch you, and there seems to be a sense of joy watching Arsenal collapse. They’ve got to try and swim against the tide and hold their nerve.

“They’ve got a job to do in midweek in the Champions League, which actually might be helpful for them. If Arsenal had a week to think about this match [against Man City], I don’t think it would help them at all. They can maybe get some confidence through progressing to the Champions League semi-final.

“But before next Sunday, they’ve got to find a balance of that emotion that you need, which is passion and fight to win a football match, but not becoming too desperate.

“Arsenal losing on Saturday isn’t because they don’t want it – it’s because they want it too much and their legs have started to get heavy.

“You’re going for your first title, you start to become consumed, and it’s the mentally emotional drain that means your legs physically appear tired.

“That’s a bit of what we saw against Bournemouth – the expectation of ‘we’re going to win this match, we’re going to win a title, and we’re desperate to do it. We want to be the first to win it in 22 years, and we’ll be club legends.’

“They’re not saying that themselves, it’s the noise around the club, the emotion in the stadium, the expectation, the fact they’ve not done it in the last two or three years when they’ve been in this position.

“This is where it gets real. This is the title race now, and they’ve got to somehow clear their minds and get that emotional balance correct.”

Sunday 19th April 4:00pm


Kick off 4:30pm

‘No one was going to hand Arsenal the title – this is what it should be’

“Arenal can win the title next weekend at the Etihad.

“Maybe I’ve got more faith in Arsenal than Arsenal have got in themselves, but when you are in a title race, you’re six games out and you’ve lost a football match, you’ve got to put it into perspective.

“Can Arsenal put do it clear enough in this next week, in a way which means that they don’t feel the fatigue in the legs and the pressure of going into this type of match? Can they feel free, like the kid in the playground?

“That’s the sort of feeling you want – that you feel confident and that you feel you can express yourself.

“Did they really ever expect that they were going to be handed their first title on a plate by Pep Guardiola and this Manchester City team, or by the Premier League? It doesn’t happen like that.

“You don’t win your first title by running away with it by 26 points – it just doesn’t happen. That’s not reality. It’s always going to be a struggle, and there’s probably been a couple of bad experiences in the previous seasons in getting to this point.

“So everything that’s happened to them, if they can normalise it and feel that ‘this is what we would have expected, no one was just going to hand it to us on a plate and we were going to basically sail over the line and do a victory lap. It’s not going to work like that, and this is what it should be’.

“I have thought for a number of years with this Arsenal team that they’ve got to go and win a game that shakes the world. They’ve got to go to City next week and win.

“It doesn’t matter how it happens – they could get battered in the first half, but be goalless half-time, but then go and nick one with 15 minutes to go, and all of a sudden the lights come on and you’re nine points clear.

“That’s what Arsenal have got to believe this week.

“The problem they’ve got is they haven’t got anybody of experience in the club of winning a title. Gabriel Jesus maybe, but I don’t think he’s the type of player that’s going to translate that to a dressing room. He’s a good player, but he doesn’t seem to be that person who can really set the tone.

“Mikel Arteta is always looking to try and find a way of how to gain an advantage and he’s got to try and find something this week.”

‘A perfect situation for Man City, but Arsenal will crawl over line’

“For Man City, they’re going to ramp it right up this. Pep Guardiola and his players have got the perfect situation.

“The Man City crowd have seen titles before and their manager is an absolute legend, one of the greatest of all time. He’ll be right up for this game next Sunday.

“It’s almost perfection for him, and you’ve got Rodri, you’ve got [Gianluigi] Donnarumma, you’ve got [Erling] Haaland, you’ve got [Phil] Foden, you’ve got Bernardo Silva, all these players who’ve won it before.

“It’s a great contrast that we build towards next weekend, and I can’t wait for it.

“I do feel now is the time for Arsenal. I’m not going to go and say it’s now or never, but it does feel a bit like because if you’ve had five years of trying to climb that mountain, and you’ve just failed at that final hurdle each time, there has to be a moment where you get over the line.

“Arsenal will crawl over the line. I don’t think they’ll get over the line easily, they might even lose next week, but I do think they’ve probably got a little bit of a cushion.

“Manchester City aren’t perfect, and Arsenal will just get there, but they’re in a lot more trouble than they were at 12.30pm on Saturday, when they were just about to kick off against Bournemouth.”