Arsenal hero Martin Keown has blasted Gary Neville and Martin Tyler for their ‘biased’ coverage of the Gunners, insisting the pair should not be allowed to commentate on future games after criticising their comments during the 3-0 defeat to Brighton. The pair were on duty for the British TV broadcaster on Sunday when Arsenal crucially lost ground in the Premier League title race and Keown was far from pleased with their performance.
Neville had suggested Gabriel Martinelli could have seen red for a challenge on Kaoru Mitoma, although the Brazilian was not even shown a yellow card by referee Andy Madley. Long-serving commentator Tyler, a Premier League veteran of 31 years on Sky’s coverage, was then accused of not being impartial in his analysis by praising Brighton’s performance at the Emirates.
And Keown, 56, raged about what he claimed was a lack of balance during the match, with the BT Sport pundit even going as far as calling the pair “anti-Arsenal”.
“How biased is the Sky Sports commentary team? It is frightening,” he said on talkSPORT. “Martin Tyler is a great professional, but he cannot hide that it hurts him that Arsenal might win a game of football.
“Honestly, we know [Gary] Neville has a problem, he is almost apologising. ‘Have I lost my mind? We should be sending Martinelli off’? No, not at all, you go with your instinct. So, there we are, it is a poke in the eye to a commentator.
“I should be more respectful, Martin is a great commentator, but please Sky, don’t put him on the Arsenal games anymore. It is a really hard listen.”
Keown said he had been pushed into talking about the subject, a claim host Jim White denied, before he continued his rant: “Tell me then, get the Arsenal fans as they’ve got to listen to it. There’s only 60,000 in the stadium but there’s millions of us at home,” he added.
White then asked Keown to elaborate on whether “he was anti-Arsenal” – without clarifying whether that was aimed at Tyler or Neville – to which Keown replied: “Yes I do, let’s get it out there.”
Neville and Tyler are yet to publicly comment on Keown’s remarks, but the former Manchester United footballer – widely recognised as one of the most prominent voices in football – did not pull any punches when assessing Arsenal’s defeat.
“In the end, the title race has just been too much. People will point towards an injury to one player: Saliba. I can’t listen to that, I’m sorry. With 20-odd players in your squad, I can’t listen to that,” he said.
“City have had players missing over the years, Liverpool have had players missing. Every team in a title race has a player missing. If they had five or six players missing, I would have said that was really unlucky. They have not had to experience that.
“Even today, Martinelli goes off and [Leandro] Trossard comes on. [Oleksandr] Zinchenko is not playing, [Kieran] Tierney is on. It is not as if you are talking about massive drop-offs. I know Martinelli is definitely a better player than Trossard but Trossard is more than capable.
“Arsenal just could not cope and in the end they did not have the energy. I think that was as much about energy and mentality as it was about quality today. They just lost their legs at the vital moment.”
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