It has been a phenomenal season for punditry nonsense, with Graeme Souness bowing out in style and Gary Neville continuing to get Arsenal so very wrong.

Graeme’s crackers
During an emotional message announcing his Sky Sports departure earlier this season, Graeme Souness joked about owing “100 apologies” to those who had attracted the Scot’s unique ire over the his last 15 years working as a pundit. Roberto De Zerbi would be at the front of that queue if he had any inclination whatsoever to cash in the receipts.

Souness has ramped up the Our Game rhetoric in recent years but it reached a crescendo with his take on the incoming Brighton manager back in September 2022. The sensationalist proclivities of a talkSPORT microphone have long appealed to the former Liverpool midfielder and he leaned into his role remarkably well with this diatribe on the Seagulls choosing De Zerbi to replace Graham Potter:

“I think it’s a risk. You’re bringing someone in who doesn’t know our game.

“Because of modern technology, you can Google; they said he impressed with his knowledge of Brighton, what they’ve done and the way they attempt to play. He could’ve got that off Google, most of it. Listen, he’s gone for an interview, so he spends a couple of hours on the internet, gets as much information as he possibly can. That’s not the work of a genius.

“I think it’s a risk bringing someone with his CV, seven jobs in nine years. If you’re an outstanding coach then people want to hold onto you.

“They’re making the appointment of a manager who has no history in the English game. Doesn’t know anything about the league, doesn’t know the players and the question I asked about what football people are going to be at the club to help him, he will need help. It’s a big risk.”

Aside from the reveal of Google as Our Search Engine instead of Bing or Yahoo, it was an incredible insight into the mind of Souness. And it is difficult to pick a favourite part:

The idea that De Zerbi might have noticed Jason Steele is a phenomenal ball-playing goalkeeper from a couple of Google prompts?

The failure to acknowledge that any managerial appointment is, by their inherent nature, ‘a risk’?

The wilful ability to ignore how Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho, Jurgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola and many more didn’t ‘know our game’ before completely changing it?

The decontextualised point about De Zerbi having ‘seven jobs in nine years’, despite the Italian almost always either leaving his posts because he was plucked by a bigger team, or because Russia didn’t quite like the look of Ukraine?

There was an escalating glory to Souness’ withering nonsense. It was through their data-led approach that Brighton had proactively identified De Zerbi as a potential Potter replacement; his name did not simply crop up in talks with an agent or after they scoured a list of free agents. And for ‘a manager who has no history in the English game’, an FA Cup semi-final place, probable European qualification and three-goal wins over Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal in his first campaign with no pre-season and a squad built almost entirely by his predecessors isn’t half bad.

In fact, De Zerbi would equal Souness’ highest-ever Premier League finish as a manager if he keeps Brighton – a point ahead of Spurs and Aston Villa with two games in hand on each – in their current position of sixth. Imagine what he could do when he does know our game.

Roberto De Zerbi celebrates a win

Martinez: shaken, not stirred
One Liverpool legend is at least capable of publicly acknowledging the error of his ways. Jamie Carragher has long since admitted defeat in the case of Lisandro Martinez, declaring the Man Utd defender to be a “special player” who might nevertheless still be “exposed” because “every player has got weaknesses”.

But that was quite the climbdown from Carragher’s initial stance: “I’m convinced this can’t work because the size of him playing in a back four.”

It was early in the season when the pundit set his stall out. And to be fair, Martinez had just been targeted to punishing effect by both Brighton and Brentford in the opening fortnight, partnering Harry Maguire in both games and being taken off at half-time of the latter.

Most assumed that Ivan Toney’s overpowering and outthinking of the centre-half would become a theme of the campaign, and Carragher made sure to lead that chorus. “Maybe he could go left-back, maybe he could play in a back three, but in a back four, he cannot play there in the Premier League,” he said, stating confidently that more opponents would see him as the weakest link.

Even after a phenomenal performance in the subsequent win over Liverpool, Carragher offset his praise by repeating those same concerns about Martinez’s height; the phrase ‘5ft 9ins’ became a staple of football coverage for a solid month or two. Yet alongside Raphael Varane, the Argentinean has been phenomenal under Erik ten Hag, even adding a World Cup winner’s medal to his collection.

And yes, Souness obviously predicted that Martinez “will get found out in our football” back in September.

Gary Neville and Arsenal: the never-ending story
There is a wider problem to address when it comes to the current stock of pundits and their analysis of Arsenal. For years they were the easiest club to examine and scrutinise; it required little research to determine that they played pretty football but were intrinsically soft and weak both physically and mentally, bulliable and pliable against more powerful opponents, and prone to collapse when it mattered most.

Those ingrained preconceptions had been there to enjoy even during Arsene Wenger’s reign. Rock up, point out they need a midfield enforcer like Patrick Vieira, scoff at an aspect of their off-field incompetence, accept pay cheque and leave.

But that has clouded objective judgement for too long. Arsenal are not that club anymore yet the cognitive biases remain as if William Gallas’ St Andrew’s sit-in was last season instead of 15 sodding years ago.

Gary Neville did, in fairness, predict that Arsenal would succumb to Manchester City’s title experience sooner or later. It was hardly a searing hot take to suggest the Premier League’s youngest team might not hold off the champions of four of the last five seasons, but still – credit where credit’s due.

“I think Manchester City will just, at some point, hit a run. And once they hit a run, they’ve got to play Arsenal twice,” Neville said in January. “If Erling Haaland starts to kick on, if City start to purr, that defence starts to shore up a little bit more than maybe it has done, I think City will win it.”

And so it came to pass. But in that same message Neville also predicted Man Utd would finish second above Arsenal, while their impending runners-up medal might come as a surprise to the man who suggested last March that Arteta should have left if the Gunners came fourth last season, as that was their ceiling.

In addressing their inevitable stumble from the summit this season, Neville still completely missed the point. The injury to William Saliba, a lack of squad depth comparable to Manchester City and tactical issues be damned: Arsenal have slipped behind Pep Guardiola and friends because of an indulgence in their favourite pastime of “over-celebrating”.

“You want your leaders in the team who have been there before to spread composure around the dressing room and to calm everybody down, you don’t want them to lift the anxiety and lift the emotion,” he said of Oleksandr Zinchenko ‘tooting his horn’ at a group of Arsenal fans following the Bournemouth win, after which the Gunners won their next three games by three goals each time.

Neville perhaps came a little too close to a moment of introspection in August 2021 when he admitted: “I don’t know the plan at Arsenal. I don’t get the strategy. I don’t get the direction of how they’re taking the team.” But it really does feel as though he has missed some crucial junctures of this journey, that Arsenal shedding their past and learning from mistakes to build towards a brighter future has caught him entirely by surprise.

He will keep poking the fanbase, as is his right. But most supporters have reached their Partridge moment with Neville: he needs to stop getting Arsenal wrong.

How many fan channels have Arsenal got? 😂

— Gary Neville (@GNev2) May 16, 2023

Keane as mustard
Before the turn of the year, Cristiano Ronaldo was the most common subject of debate in enraged studios. The talk with Piers Morgan not yet even conceptualised, the Man Utd forward nevertheless ensured his place in the headlines by refusing to come on as a late substitute during a win over Spurs. Erik ten Hag dropped him for a trip to Chelsea three days later in a decision which split opinion.

Keane backed a frustrated Ronaldo, while Neville understandably struggled to understand the idea he could be defended. But in the midst of one of their battles, one pertinent question was raised.

“You keep talking about Man Utd being way better without Ronaldo,” Keane said. “Let’s look at the start of the season when he’s not involved: he didn’t play against Man City. There’s games where United… they scored one goal today.”

“They are,” replied an exasperated Neville. “Do you not think they’re better without him? Do you not think they’re better without him? Come on.”

The answer from Keane – “I think he’s… in the starting XI, no, I wouldn’t say that” – was unconvincing enough, before he added: “Would you hang your hat on Martial or even Rashford, or Ronaldo even now?”

Rashford proceeded to score 24 goals and assist a further eight in his next 40 club games, with three World Cup goals in 137 minutes in between. The 25-year-old’s 29 goals in 2022/23 is more than Ronaldo managed in six of his seven full campaigns at Man Utd.

Souness did indeed back Ronaldo over Ten Hag who, “in five years’ time, no-one will remember”, since you ask.

Keys in a bowl
It was not enough for Richard Keys to mockingly tweet about Chelsea potentially choosing Julian Nagelsmann over Frank Lampard because the German had ‘a more impressive power-point display but knows nothing about the club or our league’. He had to use his beIN SPORTS soapbox to properly take Todd Boehly to task.

“One of the candidates is Julian Nagelsmann. What has he got that the legend that is Frank Lampard, the Chelsea legend that is Frank Lampard, has not?” he asked.

“A guy that knows the club inside out, a guy that Chelsea fans think the world of. What has Nagelsmann done? Okay, one Bundesliga, but he’d be hard pushed not to as Bayern Munich coach, but nothing else. So what makes him preferable? Is it because he’s German? Young? Rides a skateboard?”

Delightful.

Andy Gray and his slightly less hairy hands echoed Keys: “What makes Nagelsmann better, I don’t know. Modern day owners of English Premier League clubs have a fixation with a foreign name, a foreign coach, that they would be better, they’re better equipped. They’ll bring a brand of football that we can’t produce by having British coaches, which is a nonsense. But there can be no other reason that Nagelsmann should be rated higher than Frank. Yes, he’s won a Bundesliga title, but you’re right, you’d be hard pushed not to with Bayern Munich.”

In short: one Bundesliga title is better than no pots whatsoever, much like qualifying Hoffenheim for the Champions League twice after rescuing them from relegation is better than being sacked by Everton; Lampard had already failed once at Chelsea; and Gray was lamenting Premier League owners having “a fixation with a foreign name, a foreign coach” that will “bring a brand of football we can’t produce by having British coaches,” when literally discussing the same Chelsea owner who replaced a presumably skateboard-adjacent German to appoint a younger British coach earlier in the season.

Did Souness state that “Frank will get this group winning football matches again”? Oh yes. Just one more victory needed to confirm that plurality after one draw and six defeats in eight games.

Carrarese Calcio

Five worst pundit takes of the season: Neville on Arsenal, Carra admits mistake, Souness on De Zerbi