February 3rd 2025.
Former Manchester United player and current Sky Sports pundit, Gary Neville, recently expressed his disapproval of Arsenal defender Gabriel's behavior towards Erling Haaland during the Gunners' impressive 5-1 win over Manchester City. It was a strong statement from Arsenal, who sent a message to their Premier League title rivals Liverpool and handed Pep Guardiola's team a crushing defeat at the Emirates Stadium on Sunday.
The game started with a bang as Arsenal took the lead within just two minutes, thanks to a mistake from City's Manuel Akanj. Martin Odegaard capitalized on the error and scored past Ederson. The Gunners were soon celebrating a second goal, but it was unfortunately ruled out for offside. City managed to equalize against the run of play in the second half through Haaland, who had a heated clash with several Arsenal players and manager Mikel Arteta in their previous encounter.
However, Arsenal quickly regained the lead through Thomas Partey's deflected strike, followed by an impressive goal from Myles Lewis-Skelly, who even imitated one of Haaland's iconic celebrations. The misery continued for City as Kai Havertz scored another goal, and Ethan Nwaneri added insult to injury with a goal in injury time. It was a dismal performance from the reigning Premier League champions.
One of the most talked-about moments of the game was Gabriel's celebration in Haaland's face after Arsenal's early opener. It was seen as a response to Haaland's own antics in their previous meeting in September. Haaland had thrown the ball at Gabriel's head after City's late equalizer, and then had a heated exchange with Arsenal players and famously told Arteta to "stay humble." While it may have been tempting for the Arsenal squad to get back at Haaland, Neville believed that Gabriel's actions were "disrespectful" and made him feel uneasy.
Neville, who himself was no stranger to on-field confrontations, shared his thoughts on his Sky Sports podcast, saying, "I want to mention Gabriel and what he did to Haaland. It happened to me actually at Highbury many, many years ago, and we actually won 4-2 that day. A player screamed in my face. I actually don't like it, I think it's a bit disrespectful. I get that Haaland was the pantomime villain here today, but there was something about it that I didn't like. I was many things on a football pitch, but I never did that. I never went and screamed in a player's face. It made me feel a little bit uneasy, it was a little bit disrespectful."
Even City's manager, Pep Guardiola, had something to say about the incident. When asked about Lewis-Skelly copying Haaland's celebration, he simply replied, "That's good. Yeah, that's good." Guardiola also spoke about the game, expressing regret over the last 25 minutes where City seemed to have lost their focus. Despite conceding an early goal, Guardiola felt that his team had played really well for the majority of the game. However, he admitted that they made some mistakes in the last 25 minutes that cost them the game.
Guardiola said, "We forgot to do what we should do, what we had done for 65 to 70 minutes. Of course, it's a difficult game in this stadium, against that team, conceding in the first minutes – it has happened many times this season. But after 10 to 15 minutes, I think we took the game and played really good. We are in it after 1-1, and we had good momentum. We passed to make the transition with Omar [Marmoush], and then comes a deflection and the third goal. But after that, we then continued to do what you have to do defensively, and we were a little bit more patient. When you're playing that way, they can run, and of course, at 3-1, they are comfortable, so it is more difficult. I regret the last 15 to 20 minutes, but the rest was a really good game for our side. It's difficult to understand when you see the result, but this is my feeling."
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