Manchester United legend Gary Neville has lauded Arsenal for the way they responded to losing last month's Premier League clash against title rivals Manchester City.
The north Londoners were top of the table going into the match against the reigning champions but ultimately succumbed to a 3-1 defeat at the Emirates Stadium, a result that allowed City to leapfrog them into first place at the time. However, Pep Guardiola's side were unable to defeat Nottingham Forest just three days later whilst the Gunners quickly bounced back, winning against Leicester City and Aston Villa in their last two outings.
Now, Neville, who has often been sceptical of Arsenal's title credentials, has hailed Mikel Arteta's men for their mental resilience ahead of tonight's clash against Everton. Speaking on the Overlap, the former England international said: "I’ll confess, when City beat Arsenal on that Wednesday night, I thought (Arsenal) were done.
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"(Arsenal) were done. City got level with you, and I thought at that point with 16 games to go, a mountain of games, they’re going to drive on. You did what you did against Aston Villa, City dropping points at Forest, I think even to be where you are now has surprised me a little bit.
"Even after the Villa game, I wasn’t thinking Arsenal were back, because they were conceding goals and you’ve got a big problem if you’re conceding goals in a title race. The clean sheet against Leicester gave me the feeling you’d go a lot closer than I thought you would.
"You need clean sheets back and you’d started conceding in quite a few games. The Leicester 1-0, 1-0s do very much come into a title run-in.
“That really impressed me. I confess, I thought you were done after the City game, I thought you’d really struggle to come back from that and the two games away after that you could end up dropping points.”
If Arsenal are able to defeat Everton at the Emirates Stadium tonight they will go five points clear of the Citizens with just 13 league matches to play for.
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