See, you think this is about Serie A but it has nothing to do with it. My point is that Gary Neville is a terrible pundit. He offers no insight to the game whatsoever.
His ill-informed comments about Napoli were far from the worst part. He spent most of the game saying how simple it would be for Chelsea to destroy Napoli despite constant plenty of evidence to the contrary.
I said before he obviously did not do any research on Napoli but you would be forgiven for thinking Neville has not watched Chelsea since Mourinho or Ancelotti were there. He has been living in a cave for at least 6 months if he honestly thought that Chelsea were going to score a three or four goals (his words) and not concede any. Anyone who has watched even one or two Chelsea games would know:
- When Terry hasn't played, they usually concede goals.
- When they don't have a decent anchor in midfield, they concede goals.
- Bosingwa in the starting 11, they concede goals.
- Trying to play the offside trap and/or high line, they concede goals.
His specific advice was "get close to Lavezzi, watch Cavani's runs". So simple isn't it? No. As the SBS team correctly noted, this is not simple at all. On the first goal Lavezzi was able to find space because the Chelsea backs left to track Cavani's run.
Further to that advise was to have "a little more quality up front". Really ground breaking stuff from Neville, isn't it? So very insightful.
So please, before you bag me for my opinion can you actually listen to it first instead of blindly defending him because he played for Man Utd?
I have already explained why he would be saying Chelsea should win.
A UK journo will never say:
Chelsea are rubbish and should lose.
Oh look they were rubbish, never mind. Onto the next story.
That would not fill up the 24 hour sports news channel they have will it.
Much better to say that Chelsea should win as when they don't you have something to talk about.
Its that simple.
To say he hasn't watched Chelsea is stupid, to say he has done no research on Napoli especially given that they have already played City this year is stupid. Both view points deserve no further discussion.
The Napoli defence was rubbish, so with a bit more quality they could of scored more goals. Its not rocket science but its not wrong either.
As for the bit about Cavani and Levezzi, well yeah it is that easy.
Napoli are not the best team in the world and he HIMSELF has played in defences wear they have had to play teams with more than two attacking threats and handled it fine.
Just because no one at SBS has the football knowledge to say how this is done, doesn't mean it can't be. In fact who are the SBS experts that think two attackers cannot be handled by a top team?
The fact that Chelsea failed to do it, again adds a another discussion to the game. Which is what Sky and the media need.
