Jose Antonio Reyes has signed for Spanish second division side Extremadura until the end of the season but the reasons he left Arsenal are worth looking back on.
3Crash, bang, wallop
Then along with Arsenal’s unbeaten run, Reyes came crashing back down to earth.
When he got up, he was put on the floor again.
Messrs Scholes, Neville, and Neville knew exactly what they were doing.
Paul Scholes had already done it in the FA Cup semi-final in 2004, and Gary Neville has more or less admitted to underhand tactics, yet shows no remorse:
“I knew above all that I had to get physical. I had to make Reyes lose his confidence.
“If there were question marks about him…they were over his temperament. It was my job to expose that weakness.”
In his autobiography Neville talks of one occasion where, after being nutmegged by Reyes, he “went through him” but blames the Spaniard entirely for his own lack of success, saying he “wasn’t tough enough to take it”, he “couldn’t properly handle the rough and tumble”.
Reyes’ decline proved Neville right.
But why should a player have to ‘take it’? Reyes was lucky to escape those games with Manchester United without suffering a serious injury, and it’s no wonder he was intimidated with the referee not prepared to take appropriate action to protect the players.