Gary Neville reveals how Sir Alex told him to ‘tap up’ Liverpool legend for Man Utd
Gary Neville has revealed how Sir Alex Ferguson asked him to approach Steven Gerrard on international duty to see if he would sign for Manchester United.
Gerrard made 710 appearances for Liverpool, 472 of them as captain, in a 17-year spell with his boyhood club, before finishing his career with a two-year stint at LA Galaxy.
He won seven major trophies in his time at Anfield, including the Champions League in 2005, and is considered to be one of the club’s greatest ever players.
The thought of him swapping Liverpool for bitter rivals United is an alien one, but that didn’t stop Ferguson from putting one of his best agents on the case.
Speaking on the Stick to Football podcast, Neville revealed: “I have just remembered when Sir Alex asked me.. when I went into his [Gerrard’s] room with England and asked him to sign for United. I felt as though it was a bit of a hopeless [case].”
Ian Wright then asked: “You tapped up Stevie G?”
Neville added: “What would it have been, 2004? He was close to going to Chelsea and Sir Alex rang me and said he was anxious. I think his words were ‘Tell him I’ll fetch him and take him back down the East Lancs and bring him back’.
“I went to see Stevie and he was quite categoric quite quickly! He said ‘Seriously, I wouldn’t get out of Liverpool and my family would never get out of Liverpool’. Those were his exact words to me.”
Gerrard did though come close to joining Chelsea after his Champions League heroics, as he told Neville on Sky Sports Soccer Box earlier this year.
Gerrard said: “The fact is I didn’t know whether I was coming or going with Rafa at the time. Rafa was having conversations with me like ‘I know your agent is talking to Real Madrid and Chelsea’.
“I got a paranoid feeling at the time that Rafa would have taken money to try and build Liverpool on.
“Chelsea bid £37.5m. At the time, massive amounts of dough but what would you get for that now?
“[Jose] Mourinho was a massive part of that. A lack of maturity on my part allowed me to think about it and flirt with that idea a bit.
“But now I have no regrets at all because Liverpool are the club I love – and that’s the way it should be.”
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