Chip Paper: 2001 Gary Neville
Yolkie Says:
7 years on, how accurate are the comments of our then captain to be?
Have our achievements of the late 90's, early noughties garnered the same pedigree and respect as those of other teams?
I tend to agree with Neville but I would go further - the quality of the side seems to be somehow under-rated in these times. Reading and seeing pundits stating how dominant Chelsea were under Mourinho and constant references to Arsenal's invincibles (not to mention the constant delusion that currently exists surrounding their current roster), I can't help but feel the achievements of our club are constantly overlooked.
I've said it many times but sometimes I almost have to remind myself we won a double last season - I've heard more about the fact that Chelsea could be going back to Rome, or that Arsenal were in a final back in 2006.
Were the achievements of our fellow title winners greater than ours? Do they deserve such romantic memory while ours seem faded in the annals of yesteryear?
I can't accept that a Chelsea team assembled for around £250m that won two leagues and a league cup were better than a team assembled from local lads that won a domestic double, a treble including a European Cup, and three consecutive championships.
I can't accept that an Arsenal team that couldn't beat us and lost more games in their "invincibles" season than we did in our treble season were a better side than a side that won bucketloads of trophies, could win in the last minute despite being a goal down the previous minute, and could thrash any team - if it was Derby 5-0, West Ham 7-1, or even Arsenal themselves 6-1.
This lack of recognition (and I concede, I may be playing the persecuted fan here) extends, as I said earlier, to this season and our current team. Being force fed 18 months of Arsenal as the best footballing team in the land and their reserves the second best (!), we outplay them all over the pitch with a patchwork side and their "excuse" is they had reserves out. That they weren't taking it seriously.
Winning a League and European Cup double and having to listen to how irresistible Chelsea are under Scolari.
Am I being hyper sensitive or are Gary Neville's prophetic words almost 7 and a half years ago becoming all too sinisterly true?
Neville : Our achievements won't be recognised for another 20 years
Gary Neville believes Manchester United's success will not be fully appreciated for another two decades. He claims their domestic dominance is taken for granted by too many people - including some at Old Trafford.
Neville feels that only after the fullness of time will Sir Alex Ferguson's achievements really by recognised. He said: "It is some achievement to win three in a row, though it probably won't be recognised for another 20 years.
"At the moment, the way that everything is working, we are being judged on our European performances and the domestic championship seems to have been put on the back-burner. I think when people look back in 15 or 20 years they will realise that is quite a serious achievement.
"I suppose we have been victims of our own success on the domestic front. That's because we won it by such a margin last year and we lost the Charity Shield to Chelsea and people were saying they would challenge us, so would Leeds and Arsenal. Then all of a sudden we were 15 or 16 points clear and it didn't become so important.
"But it is the important thing. Maybe even the memory of losing the Championship is fading from United as well. I know how serious it is, losing the domestic championship. It is our bread and butter no matter what people think."