Neville: Is Man City charges spotlight seeping into performances?

Gary Neville was speaking after Manchester City were beaten by Nottingham Forest on Saturday; Enzo Maresca's side have lost three successive games in the Premier League; Man City were found guilty of serious breaches of Premier League rules; they deny all charges and have lodged an appeal

Gary Neville has questioned whether the recent attention over Manchester City being charged by the Premier League has begun to seep into the team's performances.

The club were found guilty of 114 serious breaches of the Premier League's financial rules in September. Man City deny all the charges and have lodged an appeal against the verdict. No sanctions have yet been announced.

However, Enzo Maresca's side have now lost their last three matches in the Premier League, including a 3-1 defeat to Nottingham Forest at the weekend.

It has seen them slip into third place - six points behind leaders Arsenal - and Sky Sports pundit Neville says the external attention cannot be ruled out as a contributing factor to their form.

He told NBC Sports' Premier League Mornings: "Something's just not right at the moment and worrying. Things point towards the obvious cloud hanging over the club.

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"Either way, Maresca has got to sort it out quite quickly in the international break because that won't be tolerated. Losing games like that doesn't happen very often.

"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?'.

"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.

"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.

"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."

Sky Sports pundit Jamie Redknapp does not consider Manchester City to be Arsenal's closest challengers for the Premier League title.

"Right now, the one I would point to is Brighton - and I never thought I'd be saying that at the start of the season.

"You've got William Saliba coming back for Arsenal. The players they have defensively...you will never see Arsenal looking as open as City looked.

"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."