Gary Neville told listeners he thinks Arsenal are more likely to win the Premier League than to claim their first Champions League after saying he does not see them getting past Atletico Madrid in the competition's semi-finals.
Neville made the assessment on his podcast as Arsenal prepare for the first leg in Madrid on Wednesday night, with Atletico Madrid set to host Arsenal in the tie. The verdict comes after Arsenal returned to the top of the Premier League on Saturday with a 1-0 win over Newcastle, Eberechi Eze scoring the only goal.
The numbers from that win were slender: Arsenal recorded a 0.64 xG and managed four shots on goal in a match that moved them three points clear at the summit — Manchester City still have a game in hand. Neville pointed to the scheduling and the balance of priorities when he framed what lies ahead for Mikel Arteta's side.
"A lot of these players don't know how to win a Champions League, but they've been so close in the title race and they'll be so desperate not to fall short in that," Neville said. He added: "I do think that Mikel Arteta has to go for every single game and not prioritise any over the other, but he knows that the Premier League is the one that's easier to win than the Champions League right now."
Arsenal remain unbeaten in the Champions League heading into the semis, but Neville was blunt about their chances. "I think there are better teams in there than them in the Champions League and it's a cup competition," he said, pointing to the reality that Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain occupy the other semi-final.
He ran through the simple arithmetic of the run-in: "They've got three games left and they've only got four left in the league, so you could argue that it's easy to win both, but I don't see them getting past Atlético Madrid and the other teams in the semifinal, but I do see them having a chance with the league." Those remaining fixtures make for tight choices: three Champions League games stand between Arsenal and continental glory, and four league matches lie between them and a first English title in two decades.
Neville also picked apart Arsenal's performance against Newcastle, focusing on how the team played rather than the result. "A lot of things they did in this game weren't great from a tactical point of view," he said. "What you want is that expression, that freedom where they play forward, they run forward and they do things with a bit more certainty in their attacking play and that didn't come at all today," he added, capturing his frustration with Arsenal's lack of cutting edge.
His final, stinging line underlined his larger point: "I don't see the idea sometimes and they're not positive enough." It is a tension at the heart of Arsenal's week — confident enough to lead the league, but questioned over their capacity to dispatch the kind of defensive, knockout-stage opponents represented by Atletico Madrid.
What happens next is immediate and stark: Arsenal travel to Madrid on Wednesday night for the first leg, then must manage four remaining Premier League fixtures alongside the two remaining knockout ties in Europe. Neville's position leaves Mikel Arteta with a public framing of the challenge — keep pushing on all fronts, or accept that the Premier League may be the clearest route to silverware.
Neville's verdict will sharpen the debate around selection, rotation and tactics, but his summary of the situation is plain and unvarnished: "I do think that Mikel Arteta has to go for every single game and not prioritise any over the other, but he knows that the Premier League is the one that's easier to win than the Champions League right now."
