On Thursday night, even as Jürgen Klopp sat forlornly in a deserted media room in Anfield talking on video conference about Liverpool's nightmare against Burnley, Gary Neville, the former Manchester United defender and resident jester, popped up in the cyber sphere adding salt to the wounds. The Nev has over four million followers on a Twitter account on which he primarily delights in provoking and taunting the vast legions of Liverpool fans.
It’s been a while since he had such cause to gloat. Liverpool had lost 1-0 to Burnley, their first home defeat in almost four years. Klopp, the Zen master of high performance completely lost his rag with Burnley’s manager, Sean Dyche, who gave the German his ultimate doorman-you-wouldn’t-mess-with glare in the tunnel at half-time.
Liverpool’s run of games without a goal extended to four, prompting an inevitable storm of speculation about an irreversible collapse and massive internal malfunction by the defending champions.
Just maybe, for United fans, the sickening sight of Liverpool winning their first title in 30 years last June might be worth it if they get to see the Klopp project disintegrate this season – even as they become champions again. Because the cherry on the cake was the sight of United sitting first in the Premier league table. Neville marked the occasion with an unnecessarily close-up-close-up of his eyes, bug-eyed with joy and glee unconfined. No caption required.
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“I’ve never been to Liverpool in my life,” Neville announced in an interview a few years ago, aghast at the very idea. This wasn’t strictly true, of course: he quickly clarified that he had been to the city as a player and pundit many times. What he meant was that he’d never done that thing: walked the Mersey, visited the Tate, boozed in the Baltic Fleet, enjoyed the Scouse street wit, stuck his head into the Cavern club. Any time he goes to Liverpool to cover games for Sky, he is secreted into the ground by 11 in the morning, long before the locals arrive and doesn’t leave again until eight in the evening, when Anfield is again deserted. The mere sight of him is a provocation.
He’s a rare bird, Neville; finishing football as one of the most decorated Manchester United players of all time without ever losing his fan-boy devotion to the club. He has admitted that he was “battered” by the public during his first season as a co-commentator with Sky Sports until the penny dropped.
He stopped “trying to be too nice, too posh” and simply resorted to being himself; North of England sharp, a spiky Manc capable of being both funny and annoying in the same sentence, running a nice line in dry humour and sharing with Roy Keane the curious tendency to slip into falsetto when over-excited, which is often.
Neville is both waspish and frequently the butt of jokes and has developed with former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher a kind of contemporary Morecambe and Wise of football-land act, both jibing and sniping at the other crowd's misfortune while remaining thick as thieves. They are a double act, which can't hurt when they sit down with the Sky executives at contract renewal time.
With delicious timing, the FA Cup fourth round has paired United and Liverpool on Sunday at Old Trafford. For the first time in many years, the BBC has been gifted with what feels like a huge moment in the venomous football rivalry between these two clubs and cities. The Cup may have lost some of its old lustre ever since United, under Alex Ferguson, elected not to play in the 1999-2000 season. But a game in which an unexpectedly resurgent United face a suddenly crumbling Liverpool team towers over the actual competition.
And nobody knows anything. It’s just over a month since former United luminaries were speculating as to if and when Ole Gunnar Solskjær would be sacked as manager. Now, the revisionism has begun on the Klopp era at Liverpool. This is, of course, a shadow season, played against a backdrop of ghostly stadia and a continuing toll of human misery and grief.
In normal times, Old Trafford would be atremble: Ferguson in the stands, the atmosphere twitchy and boisterous and the fans, the people, sick with edginess and expectation. On a normal chill January Sunday, the football ground would feel like molten and alive. This year, the best that football can offer is light distraction.
Friday marked the 15th anniversary of Neville’s infamous length-of-the-pitch run at Old Trafford to goad the visiting Liverpool fans after Rio Ferdinand’s late winner. It was inflammatory and heartfelt and cemented Neville as a hate-figure in Liverpool. Just last year, he explained it away, regretting nothing and recalling that the Liverpool fans had spent the afternoon singing charming songs about his mother.
That era has faded but as Neville has matured into his role as the telly-football’s chipper Manc, there have been signs that he gets it. The lurch and swing of the Manchester-Liverpool rivalry has always been about the public and how it makes the people of those cities feel. Neville has aged into a kind of willing pantomime figure, the worst of the goading and the jokes always laced with mischief rather than true hatred and an awareness that sooner or later – even perhaps as soon as Sunday evening – the joke will be on him. On it goes.
