Sky Sports commentator, and former Manchester United captain, Gary Neville has claimed that the tactics used by Louis van Gaal, in the 3-0 Arsenal beat down, resulted in Bastian Schweinsteiger being played with like a dog by Santi Cazorla.
In the first 20 minutes, Arsenal run riot, scoring all 3 of their goals. The Gunners were allowed complete control of the midfield due to United’s lack of presence in the middle of the park.
Speaking on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football, Neville had this to say about the German midfielder’s performance:
“Against Arsenal, for some reason, and I don’t know why, it was like, has Schweinsteiger gone rogue?”
“But the more you watch the clips back, you think it must have been a tactic.”
“In this game they got concerned about Cazorla. And Cazorla, he had him on a lead.”
“It was like a man with a ball saying to a dog ‘come to get it off me, come to get it off me’, and as soon as he gets near him, he throws it off to Mertesacker.”
“It’s like ‘Come on, Come on Doggie’ He’s toying with him, Cazorla.”
Gary Neville then compared the United performance against Arsenal with the complete turn around this weekend, in the 3-0 victory over Everton.
The ex-England right back said:
“The contrast on Saturday was absolutely dramatic. It was a case of Manchester United being patient, compact. It was a completely different thing to that Arsenal game.”
“I’m sure Van Gaal, when he think about the Arsenal game, will think, ‘if we’d done this, would it have been different’, even though Arsenal played brilliantly well.”
“It culmintated in United dominating the game. It was typical of how an away team would create a perfect away performance.”
“Against Arsenal it was a complete blip, in terms of the tactics.”
Manchester United play CSKA Moscow away in the Champions League tomorrow night and hope to put in a similar performance as that against Everton at the weekend.
