“Don’t worry, I’ll find you!”
Gary Neville is hoping Manchester City can get three points against Arsenal on Wednesday as he is lined up for Sky Sports duty on Sunday when Everton host the league’s champions-in-waiting, Liverpool. You can bet Roy Keane will be watching both games closely too.
Neville acknowledges that it is only a matter of time before Liverpool end their 30-year wait for the league title, but he would prefer if the coronation did not come on Sunday evening at Goodison Park.
Jamie Carragher, his old footballing rival and colleague now at Sky, has assured the former Manchester United captain he will track him down, whenever and wherever Liverpool are crowned champions. “Don’t worry,” he jokes, “I’ll find you!”
While both Carragher and Neville will be on the commentary beat at Premier League grounds for Sky Sports, when the 2019/20 season gets underway, Keane will be watching many of the games from the broadcaster’s London studios.
Jamie Redknapp and Graeme Souness are based in London so will be doing a bit more of the studio work than the United and Ireland legend. That does not necessarily mean Keane will not have something to say when he is not on air, and a rapid way of getting his point across.
During their joint appearance on The Football Spin, Carragher and Neville spoke about how Keane peppers them with messages during big broadcasts, even when they are live on air.
“Roy’s doing good. He’s been on the football show a few times,” said Carragher
“We’ve been on a few more times than him, and we know when we’ve started the show well because, two or three times now, we’ve both got texts off Roy. That’s whether he’s happy or not happy with what we’ve said, early in the show, in the first hour or so. That’s quite entertaining, actually.
“Sometimes when the camera comes on us, we’re looking down at our phone and we’ve been caught out a few times. A lot of the time, that’s a text off Roy – whether he’s not happy with something we’ve said or something a guest has said! He’s still making his presence felt, no doubt.”
No better man than Roy Keane and what we wouldn’t give to see some of those text messages.
Neville will be on commentary duty, on June 25, at Old Trafford when his old club takes on Sheffield United. For both sides, the winner could make big Champions League qualification strides with a victory. While the previous may have been an odd sentence to type a few years ago, that is the current state of play in England.
United boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s team selections will be fascinating as his team went into the pandemic-enforced break in the season on a winning run. It will be interesting to see if the fit again Paul Pogba gets back into the starting XI.
Neville believes there is certainly room for a United midfield with both Pogba and Bruno Fernandes in it.
“If they’re played in a system where… ” Neville begins.
“If Pogba didn’t have to work hard!” adds Carragher.
After a mock eye-roll, Neville continues: “In the last interview we did, Jamie said Paul Pogba wouldn’t make the Liverpool midfield, which was embarrassing!
“I think they both can play together and they’ll both have to be given the freedom to play. You would have said this sort of thing 15, 20 years ago – ‘Can they play in the same team together?’ Systems are more fluid now; football is more fluid.
“To me, I would say that if those two players couldn’t work together in a midfield three, with a more defensive player in with them, Olé would take that as a reflection on himself. He can absolutely make that work.
“I saw a team at United that had Scholes, Tevez, Rooney, Ronaldo and Giggs in it that won the European Cup. Sometimes Owen Hargreaves came in, or Ji-Sung Park, but in the big games you had Scholes in midfield with Michael Carrick… if you’ve got really good players, they should be able to play together.”
At the end of that response, Neville jokingly thanks Carragher for being silent.
Carragher just smiles. As a former Liverpool player, he has greater prizes on his mind.
