Richards rejects Keane’s ‘ridiculous’ Arsenal claim after his blunt jibe about ‘unbelievable’ pair

Micah Richards has responded after he butted heads with Roy Keane after Arsenal’s 2-2 draw at the Etihad against Manchester City.

Arsenal suffered a nightmare start at the Etihad as Erling Haaland fired Man City in front, but Riccardo Calafiori and Gabriel Magalhaes scored to turn the game around before the interval.

However, Arsenal went down to ten men at the end of the first half as Leandro Trossard was rightly shown a second yellow card for delaying the restart.

Mikel Arteta’s side defended for their lives after the break to frustrate Man City, but the hosts struck deep into stoppage time to equalise for Pep Guardiola’s team.

Arsenal would have taken a point before the game and while they will likely be heartbroken after conceding late on, this does not take away from their brilliant defensive display.

Richards reckons defensive duo Gabriel and William Saliba – who have been lauded as the best centre-back pairing in the Premier League – were “unbelievable”, but Keane did not agree with his fellow pundit.

“I thought Gabriel and Saliba were unbelievable,” Richards said.

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“To defend like that for 45 minutes in the second half against the best team in the league, it was just remarkable. Going and getting tight, dropping off spaces, organising, Gabriel scoring a goal…

“When Gabriel came to Arsenal [he was] making a few mistakes on the ball, but he’s sort of changed his game to be reliable every single week. Whether it’s set pieces defending, set pieces attacking, his overall play, I just thought he was remarkable.”

Keane wasn’t as convinced about Arsenal. He replied: “They’ve conceded two goals, they haven’t defended that well.

“Can I tell you, it has happened before where teams can get a result with 10 men. It’s like we’re making out they did something extraordinary.

“Listen, Arsenal did well, but City were really poor, no movement, no overlaps, no underlaps, so it was more poor play from Man City than Arsenal’s brilliant defending.”

Richards hit back: “Yeah, against one of the best teams we’ve ever seen in Premier League history.”

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Gary Lineker responded to this exchange during the latest episode of The Rest is Football. He said he found it “entertaining”.

“It was a great little tête-à-tête between the two of you,” Lineker said.

“It wasn’t a row but let’s say Roy wanted to make his points, he went ‘well anyone can just defend, it’s easy’. And he said ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about Micah, they’ve conceded two goals, they can’t have been that good’.”

“Isn’t it ridiculous,” interjected Richards, to which Lineker replied: “It was entertaining though. He knows how to be Roy Keane.”