Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher on what Manchester United v Liverpool means

Just like Gerard Pique with his justified comments about always wanting Real Madrid to lose, Jamie Carragher understands what a big football rivalry means to people in the cities where the teams are from.

“Let’s get this clear,” he said when I spoke to him recently. “I want Man United to lose every single time they play. In the league, in the cups. I get wound up when United win and I’m pleased when they lose. I’d be lying if I said different. I’m sure United fans feel exactly the same about Liverpool and I wouldn’t change that. But I can't pretend that United haven’t had brilliant teams and players.”

Substitute United for Liverpool and Gary Neville, Carragher’s colleague on television, would say exactly the same thing, though he’d have to go back to his childhood to remember when Liverpool had brilliant teams, if not players.

Neville got a lot of stick after kissing the United badge after a late United winner against Liverpool, but doesn’t regret the celebration. And nor should he. He’s a United fan and United and Liverpool mix like oil and water. Neville, does, though, contest that he ever said: “I can’t stand Liverpool, I can’t stand the people, I can’t stand anything to do with them.”

“I don’t know when I said this supposed quote that I hate everything to do with them,” he said. “I can’t recall it, yet it was trawled up before every match against Liverpool for three or four years. There’s no doubt that in my younger years I said that I grew up hating Liverpool. I have no embarrassment about that whatsoever, but the quote grew arms and legs. Next thing I was accused of hating the pets of Scousers, the mice of Liverpool, the ants in Liverpool. I’ve never been to Liverpool apart from for football. I had a chat with Giggsy about this. He used to go out in Liverpool. I couldn’t understand that.”

It’s true. In the mid 90s, with Manchester’s Hacienda club failing to find of form the late 80s, Cream in Liverpool was the place. Giggs used to go there and in early 1995, took new signing Andy Cole.

“It was one of my first nights out with Coley and I said: 'Lets go to Liverpool with my mates,'” recalls Giggs. “I knew a Scouser who was a bouncer there, so he sorted everything so that we had security all the time.

“I met Danni Minogue in Monaco at the Grand Prix years later,” Giggs adds. “She was going out with Jacques Villeneuve. We did an auction and we were giving prizes out. I said: ‘Hello Danni, nice to meet you’.

"She replied: ‘I’ve met you before. With my sister.’ And I said: ‘I know you're taking the p**s because I've definitely not met your sister’.

"‘I think you were a little bit drunk,’ she replied.

"‘Are you sure it was me?’ I said.

"‘Yes. We were talking to you. At a club called Cream in Liverpool.’

“'No, definitely not me,” I said. 'I’ve only been one and I remember that night.'

"‘No, I spoke to you by the DJ box,’ she said. And she was right - I did remember speaking to the DJ.”

Neville never went to Liverpool but when he goes to Anfield, fans come up to him and talk football. Maybe not 10 minutes after a game when they’ve lost when they’re angry, but Neville gets to games early and leaves late. It’s the same for Carragher, a match going football fan since childhood with Everton. He travelled all over the country and to Europe to support his team, a proper football fan, though his choice of club would become an issue given he played for Liverpool.

“I do remember being on the team coach coming back from a Liverpool reserve game and Everton’s first team were playing a cup match,” remembers Carragher. “The game was on the radio and I shouted ‘Yes!’ when Everton scored. I was buzzing. One of the coaches pulled me and said: ‘They’ve got high hopes for you here, this will have to stop’. By the time I made the first team, I just wanted Liverpool to win.”

Carragher came full circle over how he viewed Everton.

“They played United in the 2009 semi and I wanted United to win,” he said. “That’s probably because I think that Everton-Liverpool is the biggest rivalry. If you lose to Man United then it's 30 miles away, if you lose to Everton then they’re in your faces every day.”

Describing the atmosphere in Liverpool v United games, the Liverpool legend said: “There’s an edge. I always felt it was better at Anfield than Old Trafford, but I also felt the atmosphere in the Merseyside derby was better at Goodison. Maybe Man United expect to beat Liverpool at home just as Liverpool expected to beat Everton at home. If I could win at one place it would be Goodison.”

Carragher had many highs and lows against United.

“I played for solid and well-organised Liverpool teams,” he recalled. “The fear for us in going to United was the bigger pitch. We always thought we’d beat United at Anfield with the smaller pitch. I thought we’d be aggressive, tight and compact. Wayne Rooney always tells me that his hardest game is at Anfield because there’s no space for players.

“We weren’t United with flying wingers playing wonderful football. Under Houllier and Benitez we were solid, well organised and horrible to play against.

“So that was the fear, yet Houllier had a brilliant record at Old Trafford and Rafa was in charge for that 4-1 game in (March) 2009.”

That win saw Liverpool move up to second in the table, four points behind United. Carragher remembers how he felt after.

“Happy because we’d beaten the champions, the best team, the European champions. But United still won the league and that’s what matters. I don’t want the small club mentality of celebrating a one off win.”

Carragher had a superb career and won the European Cup, but he didn’t win a title, something which Man United fans tease him about, but he says: “I get stick from Man United fans on Twitter for never winning the league. Doesn’t bother me one bit. But when they mention that ‘this player who has won the league and you haven’t’ and name a squad player who played 11 games, I’m like ‘p*** off’. I don’t count someone who played 11 games as winning the league for a team.”

Saturday’s game, between England’s biggest two clubs, promises to be as enthralling as ever.