Neville’s Red Monday verdict

Gary Neville delivers his verdict following Liverpool’s goalless draw with Manchester United at Anfield on Monday Night Football, with the Sky Sports pundit telling us who will be the happier of the two teams…

Red Monday was a tight and tense affair, with United goalkeeper David de Gea producing two stunning second-half saves to keep the scoreline goalless and set his side up nicely for their trip to Chelsea this weekend.

Jurgen Klopp, however, will be disappointed with Liverpool’s display, especially in the first half when they struggled to inject any pace into proceedings, while their passing was also disjointed.

So in the end was a point apiece a fair result and what have the two managers learned about their players? The former United and England captain gives us his post-match opinion…

Who would be the happier of the two with the result?

It was not a fantastic game and it probably tells us a little bit where United are at this moment in time in terms of their mentality coming into this game. This is a tough place to come and you have to show respect to Liverpool, who are in a good moment.

The feeling maybe around Manchester subconsciously this past week… you would not have had too many Manchester United fans saying: ‘we are going to go to Anfield and win on Monday night’. I think it was more a case of: ‘Are we going to get through that first part?’

Liverpool are in good form and asking the questions of United whether they will do well and away from home, how is Jose Mourinho going to approach it?

I think that United will be the happier team coming out of here tonight. Jurgen Klopp will be frustrated, you could see him coming out before the second half started. It tells us a little bit about where United are in that Jose Mourinho will probably be happy.

Thinking with my coaching head on and going back to my time with England and going to Ukraine when Roy Hodgson was the manager, we got a nil-nil and in the end it helped us qualify for the tournament and get us where we wanted to be.

And tonight, if you are United, it was a dangerous game. They have had some difficult results recently and if they had come here and lost, then they have Fenerbahce Thursday, Chelsea Sunday, the Manchester derby next week – a big run of games and they could not afford to lose tonight. So in that sense you could argue job done.

United went into this match having won only one of their previous five league encounters, so did the ends justify the means?

It is easy to be critical sitting up here as we wanted a fantastic game and were expecting a good game. We have not watched Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool too many times where it is not entertaining and does not have lots of goals.

So before the game I was thinking there would be goals, there would be excitement. I have to say that in the first 20 minutes, Liverpool looked nervous really and sometimes the build-up to the game is huge.

I have been there as a player sometimes when you come back from international duty and on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and you have got Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and all you are looking at when you put the …

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