Arsenal dropped two points at home to Crystal Palace last night, and Gary Neville has criticised both Ben White and Gabriel Magalhaes.
The Gunners rescued a point in the 95th minute after Christian Benteke and Odsonne Edouard both scored in the second-half to overturn Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s early opener, with Lacazette coming off the bench to secure the draw at the death.
While you could argue that we were second best in most areas of the pitch throughout the 90 minutes, Gary Neville has picked out our defenders for specific criticism, claiming both should have done better to stop Palace’s goals.
“In this position, Ben White just drops off, drops off, drops off. You can’t drop off like that,” Neville said live on Sky Sports(via the Mirror).
“I think both centre-backs, Gabriel and Ben White, will look at those goals and think, ‘look, we’ve got to try and engage outside the box’.
“You’re better off going and giving a foul away and taking a booking outside the box than letting him come in and shoot like that. And that isn’t good defending.”
While it is easy to look at the last man, it was Thomas Partey who gave the ball away in our own half which needs looking at, while Lokonga played his part in giving the ball away before we were punished by the second, and it would be wrong to solely focus on just the defence, who no doubt should have done better also.
Did any of our players actually be proud of their performance yesterday?
Patrick
Auba proved me wrong – worked very hard and linked the play well when he had the chance. The rest of the team was guilty of not supporting him properly imo
Laca changed the game when he came on and showed leadership
👍
100% I was there last night his running off the ball was relentless, but I could see they weren’t pressing in packs meaning he was often doing stuff on his own.
Ball retention is a real problem with Arsenal right now, Arteta should never allow Partey to be the sole CM in a PL game. He was hung out to dry and his mistakes in the second half were only exacerbated because Arteta knackered him out in the first half.
White was brought in to replace Luiz, who helped Gabriel and the pair together were good. White is nothing like Luiz, was not worth 50mil and is not the ideal Gabriel partner. The defence for me against stronger opposition with White and Tomiasu in look very shaky.
So White is rubbish and Gabriel was blameless for the Benteke goal?Double standards Reggie and you are deluding yourself if you think the Brazilian was good last season.I share your concerns regarding Tomi but White will prove to be top quality, the very words used by the current Managers of Leeds and Brighton but what do they know .