Gary Neville believes his former club Manchester United delivered the perfect Wembley performance to end their six-year wait for a trophy in the Carabao Cup final.
Erik ten Hag‘s side lifted the first piece of domestic silverware on offer this season after beating Newcastle 2-0 in the final, with first-half goals from Casemiro and Marcus Rashford seeing off the Magpies.
Neville has admitted that United’s display wasn’t the prettiest on the eye, but he feels they handled the occasion brilliantly.
‘I thought it was probably as good a cup final performance as you could wish to get at Wembley,’ Neville said on The Overlap.
‘I spoke to one of the United coaches at the end – they were actually disappointed by the fact that they didn’t play the football that they’d expect them to play.
Manchester Uniuted won the Carabao Cup on Sunday to end their six-year wait for silverware
Gary Neville feels United’s players handled the occasion perfectly at Wembley
Neville has compared the team’s recent performances to ones seen under Sir Alex Ferguson
‘But to manage a game in that way, to control it and to show the experience that they did, I thought it was an unbelievable performance. For me, it was really impressive. They were really shrewd and street-wise.’
United’s victory at Wembley came off the back of a win over Barcelona in the Europa League, when Erik ten Hag’s side overturned a half-time deficit in the second leg to move into the last-16.
The turnaround was inspired by a passionate Old Trafford crowd getting right behind the players as United mounted wave after wave of attack.
Neville liked what he saw over the two legs against the Catalan giants and in the win against Newcastle, and has compared those performances to ones that were commonly seen when Sir Alex Ferguson was at the helm.
‘The last two weeks, what I’ve seen against Barcelona and what I saw in that final on Sunday was for me what I thought Manchester United was under Sir Alex Ferguson,’ Neville continued.
‘That we’d win games in different ways. It would be electric, it could be counter-attacking, it could be resilient, it could be defensive, it could be deep, compact, it could be aggressive, it could be nasty like Martinez and Casemiro were at times on Sunday.
‘I never want him to change the way we played in these last couple of weeks. I have no aspiration as a United fan to watch anything other than what I’ve watched in these last couple of weeks which is fight, spirit,…