Martin Keown fears Arsenal will not win the Premier League until Pep Guardiola quits

The talkSPORT host saw his old side lose out on the title with one game to spare as the Gunners fell 1-0 to Nottingham Forest.

Advertisement

That result handed City their fifth title in six years, with only Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool able to stop that run in 2019/20.

Despite that minor blip, Keown thinks it isn't just Arsenal that won't be able to stop Guardiola's dominance of England from now on.

Advertisement

When asked if Arsenal can win the title next year, he replied: "Not the way they finished the season, no.

"I think we need Pep to hang up his boots for anyone to have a real chance of winning this.

"The greatest gift he could give to City is to go to the boardroom and help sort out his successor, then they'd have total dominance forever.

"Pep's the best in class, I put that question to him on TV, 'are we not going to win anything until you step aside?' he said 'I'm not going to step aside, I really enjoy what I'm doing'.

Advertisement

Advertisement

"This fella is here for a long time to come and he can choose to do what he wants, and then I think he helps find a succession plan for the next manager."

On Guardiola's impact this season, Keown added: "He bought Rico Lewis into the team and he was punching balls through the midfield, let [Ilkay] Gundogan play closer to [Erling] Haaland and it changed the way they played.

"[Joao] Cancelo, you head off to Bayern Munich because you're unhappy. He took Lewis out again in big games because he didn't have the experience.

Advertisement

"So this manager, he's spinning all these plates and the decisions that he's making are brilliant, he always finds the right tactics and that's what we're up against."

Keown hasn't completely given up hope, though, and has advised City's competitors to look at what his Arsenal side did in the early 2000s.

He continued: "Arsenal weren't even in Europe last season so there was a group of players missing, Man City have had 10 years of the Champions League year-on-year, buying great players, [Oleksandr] Zinchenko and [Gabriel] Jesus have improved the team but they need to go to the next level next year.

Advertisement

"In the Manchester United era, we were faced with the same thing at Arsenal. They won the treble in 1999 and we were just going to pack up and that was it? In 2002, we came back and won the double, so what you do in this adversity is you build."