Red: My Autobiography by Gary Neville Page B

exploring our potential. His departure means that he fell short of achieving his dream of conquering Europe, but it doesn’t lessen his status in my eyes. I played with him for two full seasons and we won a title both times, the first of them almost single-handedly down to him.
    He will always have a place in the hearts of the fans because of his charisma and his daring. That temper is part of the legend. People loved him because he did, and said, things they would love to have got away with.
    People talk about money and fame affecting footballers, distorting their characters and warping their judgement. And in many cases that might be right. But that wasn’t the case with Eric. As with Keano, what you saw was what you got. They’d have been the same fiery individuals whether they were footballers or electricians.
    Some players, some people, are capable of counting to ten when they are wound up. Others, like Roy and Eric, are incapable of taking a deep breath. That’s not down to the fame or the money. They are firebrands by nature, and I loved having them on my side.
     
    Eric’s retirement caused shockwaves in English football but it didn’t send the club into meltdown. That’s probably the greatest strength of the boss’s era. You can be one of the greatest legends United has ever seen – and I was lucky enough to play with a few – but you leave and the club moves on without so much as a glance back. You walk out the door and you’ll be lucky if you get a mention. There’s never a leaving party, except when a member of staff leaves. There’s always someone to fill your boots, and another trophy to be won. It keeps everyone humble, and hungry.
    With Eric gone, in the summer of 1997 the boss brought in the experience of Teddy Sheringham. I knew his class on the pitch from my time with England. And you should have heard Scholesy drool about him. He loved playing with Teddy because he recognised another player who had eyes in the back of his head. He’d still be talking about Teddy years after he left – about the awareness, the ability to take a ball in tight areas, the vision. Teddy didn’t have the aura of Eric but he was equally good at drawing the best out of his teammates.
    Teddy was the significant signing of the summer, but Phil and I were also ready to update our contracts on the back of our success. Wealth has been a happy by-product of my career, but the one thing I always craved was security. So when the club intimated that they would offer us seven-year contracts we couldn’t scribble our names quick enough, even though others counselled against it. The negotiations lasted about fifteen minutes.
    My dad was on a European trip, and he bumped into Terry Venables. He’d read about the new long-term deals and, in the age of Bosman, of free agency and huge signing-on fees, asked why we’d signed away our futures for as long as seven years. ‘Because they wouldn’t give us ten,’ my dad replied, and he wasn’t being sarcastic.
     
    Losing Eric would hinder any team, and then two months into the 1997/98 season we lost our new captain, Keano, to a serious knee injury. We had a terrible time with injuries that season. Another player we lost for a long period was Denis Irwin, after a scandalous tackle by Paul Bosvelt in a Champions League game at Feyenoord. It was a horrible night, with Feyenoord trying to kick lumps out of us, one of those games when you end up going in for every tackle with your own studs up out of self-protection. Julio Cruz, their Argentine striker, spat straight in my face and offered to meet me in the tunnel. When I walked off he wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
    A young squad was exposed. We had an average age of twenty-three in some matches, and at one stage our oldest outfield player was Andy Cole at twenty-six. We were depleted, but nothing should detract from the Arsenal team that won the championship that year, the best domestic opponents I faced. The best of the bunch,