Manchester United legend Gary Neville has hit out at Sam Allardyce’s comments about new Arsenal manager Unai Emery.

Arsenal have slipped to two defeats in their opening two Premier League games, losing to champions Manchester City and London rivals Chelsea.

It’s been a tough start to life for Emery in his first season at the club, but it was always going to be that way after 22 years of Arsene Wenger’s philosophy being changed all of a sudden.

But his tactics have been openly criticised by former Premier League and England manager Allardyce, who told talkSPORT after their defeat to Manchester City: “It is the manager’s fault.

“Don’t ask somebody to do against Man City what you shouldn’t do. You shouldn’t play out like that against Manchester City.

“What do Manchester City do? They press, press, press so why do you try and play out when they press, press, press?

“Even the Arsenal crowd cheered when he [Cech] dropped one in the opposition’s half.

“We are getting obsessed with this stupid “let’s play out from the back, split the centre halves either side of the 18-yard box and go and play from there”… it’s utter rubbish to play like that all of the time.

“When you’re the best at it [like City] then you can do it.”

But speaking on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football, Neville hit back at Allardyce, saying that Emery is trying to build a title-winning team at the Emirates.

“He’s only five to six weeks in. I saw Sam Allardyce’s comments last week on the radio after the first game,” said Neville.

“He talked about ‘you can’t do this, you can’t do that’. Unai Emery’s not trying to get eight points from five games to avoid relegation.

“He’s trying to build a team to win a title. He’s trying to build a team in the style to win a title. Not lump it long and get in behind them.”