Gary Neville Raises Serious Concern For Arsenal Amid Premier League Title Challenge

English football pundit and former player Gary Neville says Arsenal will find it ‘really difficult’ to win the Premier League if their recent defensive issues continue for the rest of the season.

Arsenal has conceded 16 goals from their first 19 league games this season in their bid to win the Premier League since 2004. But the Gunners have begun shipping goals in recent weeks, conceding 12 in their last six games in all competitions.

Arsenal’s wobble has allowed Manchester City and Manchester United to close in on the leaders but Mikel Arteta’s side remain two points clear of defending champions City with a game in hand.

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The Gunners came from behind twice to beat Aston Villa 4-2 on Saturday, while Man City dropped two points at Nottingham Forest.

Neville insists it was a ‘good weekend’ for the Premier League leaders following a 3-1 defeat to Manchester City in midweek but says Arsenal’s title challenge could falter if they fail to shore up the defence.

‘After the result in mid-week I felt it was critical for Arsenal to win at Aston Villa,’ Neville said on his Sky Sports podcast. ‘For so long that looked in doubt as Villa put in a good performance.

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‘But it was a really good and important victory for Arsenal in the end. There’s such a long way to go in the title race, it will twist back and forth.

‘We’ve got an intriguing title race but it was good for Arsenal because they needed a good weekend after that Man City defeat.

‘One thing I would say though is that Arsenal have conceded 12 goals in the last six games. One of the traits of a run-in is if you’re conceding goals and teams think they have a chance of scoring, it’s very difficult to win a league, it really is.

‘They just need to watch that. This weekend will give them confidence and if they can get back to some clean sheets that will be really important.

‘Conceding goals is something they just need to watch out for because that will make things very difficult for them.’

Arsenal’s title challenge appeared to be falling apart as they trailed Aston Villa 2-1 at the weekend, having already dropped points to Man City, Brentford, and Everton this month.

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But the Gunners fought back superbly to beat Unai Emery’s side and return to the top of the Premier League.

‘Today I think we can take two big lessons,’ Arteta said after the crucial win. ‘In the first half we did the simple things wrong and in the second half we raised our individual level and did the simple things right.

‘We totally merited the win. Psychological it was really tough to get that result against Man City and then less than three days we come to Aston Villa and win which is a difficult thing to do.

‘Character, quality and having the right temperament and personality, not throw our toys away, emotionally I think we coped really well.’