Every day, Manchester City’s decision seems worse as the Premier League title race gets more intense. Manchester City’s choice to let Nicolas Jover go to Arsenal in 2021 is turning out to be a big mistake. He’s now helping Arsenal a lot, especially with set pieces, which was clear in their recent win against Tottenham.
Gary Neville Playfully Refers to Nicolas Jover as a “Little Nuisance”
Nicolas Jover has become quite famous, even though he’s not a well-known member of Mikel Arteta’s team. But there’s a good reason for it. Arsenal has been doing really well with set pieces this season, and that’s a big part of why they’ve been successful. In their recent match against Tottenham, Arsenal scored two goals from corner kicks, and Jover was really happy about it. Arteta and Jover first worked together on Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City coaching staff.
After Arteta left to become Arsenal’s head coach in 2019, he brought Jover back two years later. If City end up losing the title race this year, it’s clear that Arsenal’s skill with set pieces will be a big reason why.
Talking about Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg’s own goal on Sunday, Sky Sports commentator Gary Neville jokingly called Jover a “little nuisance”.
“They’ve got the first goal, Arsenal, and it has been the same Arsenal set-up all year, and it’s been good all year, Ben White the nuisance, the five big lads at the back getting across that near-post and [Takehiro] Tomiyasu does just enough. He just blocks Hojbjerg and he can’t get a full head on it.” Gary Neville said.
Jover’s Journey: From Montpellier to Arsenal
Nicolas Jover, who is French but was born in Berlin, started working with Montpellier, a team in the French league, when he was in his twenties. Later, he became an assistant at Brentford in 2016. After spending three years with Brentford, he joined Manchester City. Then, he gained more attention when he started working at Arsenal. Mikel Arteta told TNT Sports earlier this year
“I gave my advice to go and recruit Nico. I met him, we started to discuss how we could apply set pieces to the open play, which is also connected, they’re not two separate things, it’s all connected in the game, and how we could maximize that.”
As featured on ManCityNews.com
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