The world looks that much greyer when your team’s in a bad place. We get it, it’s infuriating, and at the end of a long and pointless season that sensibility can colour everything around you.
But really, lads, was all that anger strictly necessary?
“This robotic nature of not leaving our positions, of basically being micro-managed within an inch of our lives, of not having any freedom to take a risk, to go and try and win a football match, is becoming an illness in the game, is becoming a disease in the game,” was Gary Neville’s reaction to the Manchester derby on Sky Sports.
“I saw Forest the other night, I was kicking my cups of tea over,” was the highlight of Roy Keane’s similar rant.
"They all walked off thinking 'we're okay here'... it was really disappointing."@GNev2 describes micro-management as an 'illness' within the professional game 🤕 pic.twitter.com/i20x6l03fq
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) April 6, 2025
The reaction in the studio was borderline hysterical, yet it was in keeping with a growing sense of needlessly provocative opinions seeping into public discourse as a Premier League season peters out for the first time in four years.
The other major one being Liverpool are unworthy champions, or at least are going to win the title in a talent vacuum.
That is categorically incorrect; an opinion without evidence that speaks only to our emotional need for late peaks rather than early ones, and to how spoilt we have become after three consecutive to-the-final-day title races (Neville, it should be said, agrees with that perspective).
On the Manchester derby, it was a 0-0 that simply suited both teams, that’s all. Man City were happy to keep consecutive clean sheets for the first time this season and were understandably cautious in their approach, fearing a third defeat of the season to a counter-attacking Ruben Amorim team.
Meanwhile Man Utd were desperate to avoid a big defeat to their arch rivals and, in this most horrendous of campaigns, can take obvious solace from a point against a Pep Guardiola side.
Arguably the only reason anybody complained about the game was its headline billing at 4:30 on a Sunday. Had it been the early kick-off on Saturday, would anybody have begrudged how the two teams approached the game?
As for Liverpool’s defeat at Fulham, straightforward evidence that the mid-table teams are very good was interpreted as a sign the top team aren’t, leaving Arne Slot in an impossible situation; win and the league is too easy, lose and his Liverpool are unworthy champions.
Two things are happening here, two things that link the United and Liverpool narratives together.
First, people are bored and there is airtime to be filled.
In the search for a story completely unnecessary questions are being asked about the quality of the division.
Liverpool are on for 90+ points and the race for Champions League football has clearly shown there are lots of good teams in the top half especially.
The one in 6th is in the Champions League quarter-final and stands a good shot of knocking out the favourites, while the teams in 13th and 14th are the two frontrunners to win the Europa League.
In fact, anyone watching closely can see the Premier League is embracing fast-transition football and a more urgent, direct tactical agenda than it has done in years, moving at full pelt away from this supposed “disease” of robotic football.
Which brings us onto the second reason for the loss of perspective among the pundit class: the major power shift that’s left most of them feeling sore.
Five of the ‘Big Six’ have under-performed, and to a large extent in exactly the same way, by slowing down and getting stuck just as clubs in the rung below embrace a transitional style purpose built to strike down slow possession.
Neville is wrongly accusing the division of an “illness” that is really just inflicting his team, yet even here it’s a slightly harsh reading of Amorim’s attempts to put in place scaffolding before freedom can be given.
We saw the same thing at Man City under Pep Guardiola and at Arsenal under Mikel Arteta; “robotic” football while the basics are committed to muscle memory, after which improvisation is allowed within automated parameters.
That’s not to say Amorim is on that path.
Neville, Keane, and others are justified in their frustration at the project, but with so little else to talk about – and as boredom turns into righteous anger – there is a danger that England’s most prominent broadcasters are starting debates that don’t need to be had.
Some games will be 0-0 draws that suit both parties. Some titles will be won by 10-15 points.
There isn’t always a story, isn’t always anything deeper than a very good team deservedly running away with the league – and a few traditional powerhouses struggling to keep up with a strong and evolving division.
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