Gary Neville: Mikel Arteta Should Leave Arsenal If He Gets Top-Four, That’s The Ceiling

By The Editor
on 30th March 2022

Gary Neville feels Mikel Arteta should walk if he achieves a top-four finish…

Former Valencia manager Gary Neville has surprisingly called on Mikel Arteta to leave Arsenal should he take the club to Champions League qualification as that’s “as good as it gets”, he said on The Overlap.

Arteta has guided the club to fourth place with 10 games to go and while Neville claims he’s still not convinced Arsenal will occupy that position come May, he feels the Spaniard should look to depart should he complete the objective.

The Sky Sports pundit argues that finishing fourth is the most Arsenal can hope for, and feels the club are unable to compete with Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester United.

Arteta has been consistent with his rhetoric that Champions League qualification should be used as a springboard and has often referenced how Liverpool used the added revenue and prestige to take their team to another level.

Neville has ignored that and backed Arteta to walk out of the door if he brings Champions League football back to the Emirates for the first time since 2017.

“I think Mikel Arteta is a good operator,” Neville told The Overlap panel.

“My concern is if Arsenal finish fourth this season – which to be fair, I think is 50/50, I still think there’s a long way to go in that race – but if they finish fourth, that’s in some ways as good as it gets.

“You’ve got Pep [Guardiola], [Jurgen] Klopp, Man United, Chelsea, where can Arsenal go? They’re not going to compete.

“Mikel Arteta is a brilliant coach, I love that we’re seeing a team that he’s getting the maximum out of, I can see exactly how he wants to play, we all can.

“But he gets to fourth [and] if he was really hard about it, he’d probably say “right, that’s the best I can do there, I’m going now and getting my next job.”

Firstly, how on earth has he snuck Manchester United in there? Neville, like many Man Utd fans, hasn’t come to terms with the club they’ve become post-Sir Alex Ferguson.

Since the Scotsman retired, we’ve consistently finished above them and won more trophies in that period.

Also, the gap between us and the top two teams can be closed with recruitment, something Champions League qualification will allow Arteta to take advantage of.

Given Neville’s history with predictions, the future certainly looks bright for us and Mikel Arteta.