Neville claims Guardiola would take ‘one Arsenal player’ in an ‘absolute heartbeat’ at Man City
Gary Neville thinks Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola would take Arsenal midfielder Martin Odegaard in an “absolute heartbeat”.
The Gunners led the Premier League title race for most of last season with Man City pipping them to the trophy in the final couple of months of the season.
Man City went on to win the Champions League and FA Cup too to achieve an incredible Treble and Neville reckons Odegaard would be the Arsenal player Guardiola would choose if he had the option to take one Gunners star.
Odegaard was in stunning form last season, contributing 15 goals and seven assists in 37 Premier League fixtures and he’s grabbed himself another two goals in the first five matches of the current campaign.
Heaping praise on the Arsenal captain, Neville said on Sky Sports: “Odegaard, it takes a lot to say this but when you think of the most beautiful football players that we’ve watched in the last seven or eight years in the Premier League I always think of David Silva and Kevin De Bruyne being just something you watch and you’re like that’s the way to play football.
“Odegaard, I’m not saying he’s as good as De Bruyne or Silva yet, I think he’s got a bit to go in his career, but he’s getting to a point whereby now when I watch him play it is so smooth, it’s so silky.
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“I knew he was always a talented player but we’re now talking about something that is very different and just so talented, this is real class. I think he now starts to be mentioned in the realms. Pep Guardiola, if you said could take one Arsenal player out of this Arsenal team I think he’d take him in an absolute heartbeat.
“He would break into that Manchester City team because he’s a beautiful player to watch. Every time I watch him he gets better and better. Arsenal must recognise what they have, I’m talking about the Arsenal players who must feed him as much as they possibly can.
“The more he gets on the ball in the final third the more football matches, assists and goals they’ll have in matches.”
Arsenal scored from an intricate passing move from a short corner in their 1-0 victory over Everton on Sunday and when asked about the set-pieces in his post-match press conference Arteta said: “Yeah we work on everything, as every manager does, to expose the weakness of the opponents and to hide yours. That’s the outcome of what we tried to do. Then the results take care of themselves.
“We found openings in many other ways but we weren’t neat enough to take advantage in the last pass, the last action. Credit to them because they defend the box really well as well. Probably the game would have been really different if Martinelli’s goal had been allowed. It wasn’t. I feel super happy today.”
