Gary Neville dissects Sir Alex Ferguson’s inspirational three-part team talks

Gary Neville and Sir Alex Ferguson won plenty during the pair’s time at Man United and the former Red Devils’ defender has detailed how the Scot was able to inspire the side to glory

Video Loading

Video Unavailable

The video will auto-play soon8Cancel

Play now

Erik ten Hag: No ‘risk’ to come to Manchester United

Gary Neville has lifted the lid on Sir Alex Ferguson ‘s three-pronged weekly team talk – and said maintaining 20 years of success was down to the personal pre-match talk about grandparents and history rather than the tactics and football part.

The former Manchester United star also revealed that despite Sir Alex’s reputation for ‘hairdryer’ blasts over players’ mistakes, the pre-match speech actually showed he expected players to have bad games and he urged the others to care for them. Neville said when it came to personal non-football problems, Fergie would give the most compassion, love, and understanding – and would lose his temper only .001% of the time.

Neville, who enjoyed 20 trophy-laden years under former manager Ferguson at the club, said it was the pre-game chat about subjects like the second world war, grandfathers wearing ties and working hard, and a human anecdote that saw the team constantly winning for years.

Speaking on Wednesday’s Political Party podcast, he said: “Every single team talk that we had was split into three areas. The first was an inspirational story – what’s going to keep us going. When people say to you ‘why could you keep going for 20 years, every single week, winning Premier League title after Premier League title’, I think that first five, ten minutes of his team talk every single week was the moment.

“He would then look at the opposition and then he would say ‘this is how we’re going to win the game’. So it would be ‘this is what the opposition is like, you need to attend to these strengths that they have’ and then he would tell us about how we would win the game.

“But that first part was always around stories of working hard, him striking when he was younger in Govan in the shipyards, stories of his parents, stories of our grandparents, and actually tapping into my heart strings was stories that he always used to tell about our grandparents waking up in the morning with their shirt and tie on, having real pride what they stood for, a good work ethic, what they went through in world war two which obviously he would refer to.

Where do you think Man Utd will finish in the Premier League next season? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

“And that inspiration of how lucky we are. Then he would talk about things like looking after one another, you know ‘there will be someone out there on that pitch today struggling that’s not having the best game, make sure you look after them, you’ll need them some time in your life and be proud to work with each other’.

“And this team spirit and these stories poured out every single week. And I was made a PFA union rep, when I was 23, so I was on PFA management committee which was representing players rights. And I was really, really passionate about that role in the sense of that wasn’t looking after the 200-grand-a-week players, that was looking after the players who were in their 50s and 60s who needed support, mental health support, they needed care, a lot of them suffering with dementia, it could be young players booted out the game who needed education, who needed upskilling.

“Sir Alex was obviously from that background of fighting for each other, working for each other, never letting each other down,” he explained. “On the other hand, I was surrounded by a group of multi-millionaires. Yet you can still be a millionaire, because Sir Alex was a millionaire and he had a wine collection, and he had all these things that were fantastic, he had these watches, he went to the horse racing, all things that the aristocracy do in this country.

“And we were the same. We had players who lived in Cheshire in big houses – but we were good lads. And we looked after each other, and we looked after our families and we looked after our community.

“We were called the wags’ culture. We were described as footballers giving it large. That wasn’t Patrice Evra from France or Eric Djemba-Djemba from Cameroon or Nemanja Vidic from Serbia. They weren’t like that. Footballers come from working class backgrounds.

“There are very few posh football players, because posh people don’t tend to want to go out in the street and get muddy when they’re younger. I hardly played with a footballer – apart from Gerard Piqué – I don’t think I played with one football player who didn’t come from a working-class background.

“And they remained true to their roots because of the grounding we were given every single day by our mentors in the changing room, senior players, but also Alex Ferguson.

“Sir Alex Ferguson stood by everybody that he could in the whole club. All 500 people that worked at Manchester United were equal – Theresa who cut the food in the canteen, Debbie who worked on the charity side, John who ran the foundation, he knew, we all knew, every single one.”

He said about Sir Alex’s reputation for losing his temper big time with his ‘hairdryer’ attacks at players “that was .001% of the time”.

He said: “The rest of it was information to help you, it was pushing you on, stretching you, funny, humorous, great story-teller.”
But although Neville, 47, said United’s stars cared for each other on the pitch, he said supporting one another over personal problems was done away from games and not allowed in the dressing room.

Neville added: “How I was brought up in our dressing room, ‘you don’t bring your s*** in here, no seriously don’t bring your own stuff in here, you might have a personal problem at home, you might have a challenge, we’re going out to win together, now I’m not going to let you down’.

“And afterwards you’d go and knock on the door of Sir Alex and tell him what’s happened and he would give the most compassion, he would be the most understanding, and he would give you all the love in the world.

“And that’s really good. You want commitment, but you also want that compassion, and that sort of love back as well. I think that’s when you’ve got a great team.”