When Manchester United’s players sat in the Camp Nou dressing room prior to the 1999 Champions League final Sir Alex Ferguson told his stars that the price for losing the match would be to walk past the trophy and not be able to touch it. Ferguson’s speech worked with United famously winning after two injury-time goals against Bayern Munich.
The legendary Scottish manager pulled the same trick on Saturday, with United desperately needing to win at in-form City to keep this year’s title ambitions alive.
“The manager asked us before the game: ‘Do you want to win this title?’,” Neville told the Sun.
“It may sound obvious but the answer is ‘yes, of course we do want to do that’. We knew we had to go out and show our fans we have the pride and the desire to win matches – and to win the league.
“We’re not getting carried away because we still have three difficult games to go, starting with Tottenham next Saturday.”
That desire translated into a 93rd minute winner from Paul Scholes, the man who has won everything in the book… and still wants more.