Gary Neville believes the scrutiny surrounding Manchester City’s financial breaches may be beginning to affect their performances after a third consecutive Premier League defeat.
City were found guilty of 114 serious breaches of the league’s financial rules in September. The club deny all the charges and have appealed against the verdict, with no sanctions announced.
Their latest setback, a 3-1 loss to Nottingham Forest, has left them third in the table and six points behind leaders Arsenal.
Neville said the continuing publicity could be weighing on the players, although he accepted that City’s recent form also reflected shortcomings on the pitch.
“Something’s just not right at the moment and worrying. Things point towards the obvious cloud hanging over the club,” he told NBC Sports’ Premier League Mornings.
“Is it finally catching up with them in terms of the mental fatigue of what would be negative publicity they’ve had on the players? Are they drained physically and mentally through that or are they just going through a bad patch?”
Neville suggested that players, their families and their agents would be repeatedly confronted with questions about the case and its possible consequences.
“It’s all everybody’s talking about back home in the last month or so, and those players will be getting asked constantly, ‘What do you think is going to happen? What happens if they do get relegated? Will you stay?’,” he said.
“Now you imagine that your family is having to put up with that, your agent’s continually thinking about those types of things, so it can’t be ruled out as a factor that’s going to start to seep in.”
He added that City could not use the issue to excuse their results and needed to improve tactically, physically and competitively during the international break.
“If you lose a football match or two and then you can start to look at that as an excuse, but they’ve got to play better, they’ve got to compete in games, they’ve got to make sure that they do better on the pitch from a tactical and physical perspective,” Neville said.
“But I do believe it will be having some impact just because of the weight of what’s been hitting them from a publicity point of view in the last four to six weeks.”
Jamie Redknapp, another Sky Sports pundit, said he currently regarded Brighton as a more credible challenger to Arsenal than Manchester City.
“I don’t see anything other than Arsenal running away with it at this point. They are just so much better than everyone else in every single area,” Redknapp said.
