In the hours since Manchester City travelled to St James' Park and beat Newcastle United 1-0 on Wednesday night, a rather shocking statistic has emerged.During the 90 minutes, Newcastle's players completed just 115 passes. Nicolas Otamendi, a centre-back, completed 122.City utterly dominated Rafa Benitez's side, who enjoyed only 22% possession and managed six attempts at goal, finding the target twice.Newcastle's dour performance drew criticism from Sky Sports pundits Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville, with the latter particularly scathing with his assessment at half-time."Containment is the right way to look at it because you're going to have a lot of time without the ball," explained Neville, "but I also don't think we should just sit and accept that first 30 minutes."No ambition from Newcastle. That's not acceptable in this league. It's difficult, of course, from Rafa Benitez’s point of view."The finish, Sterling watches it come over the defender, and he hits it off balance - it's something he could never have done two years ago. He makes this Newcastle tactic look embarrassing."It has to change. There's defending, and there's showing absolutely no ambition whatsoever. If it were a boxing match, the referee would have stopped it."Hopefully it will spark them into life, to give them something to watch."Neville's comments didn't go down very well with football fans for a couple of reasons, one being that Newcastle wouldn't have stood a chance against City had they been more attacking.Another is that Neville's former employers, Manchester United, have also been guilty of playing defensively recently, despite having a team worth over £350 million.Robbie Fowler has now chipped in and he's pretty much nailed it by saying United did the exact same thing against Liverpool and Manchester City earlier this season.

FOWLER HITS BACK AT NEVILLE

Savage. When United travelled to face Liverpool in October, they sat back all game and soaked up pressure, hoping to break on the counter attack.

And during the 2-1 defeat to City on December 10, the Red Devils allowed their opponents to have all the possession despite being at home.

Most football fans seem to agree with Fowler's response to Neville, as you can see in the Twitter reaction below.

TWITTER REACTS

Over to you, Gary...