Gary Neville is widely recognised as one of the best pundits around and an enjoyable co-commentator for Sky Sports these days, but it certainly wasn't always that way in terms of his work alongside the likes of Martin Tyler, and it wouldn't have reached this point if Neville had not been convinced to reconsider his plans to quit.
Speaking in an interview with Tubes where he looked back on some of his more interesting tweets from the last few years, the question of whether Phil Neville ever asked him for advice on punditry or commentary was put to Neville, who quickly pointed out that people seem to forget his rough start with the company.
Initially put on co-commentary duties, Gary Neville admitted that he was acting out of character, and trying to sound 'posh' for live TV, and when he realised what he was doing he made a conscious decision to change.
What people forget is in the first year that I was at Sky, I got battered for my co-commentary. The first seven or eight months.
And I was trying to be like, too nice, trying to be too posh, trying to sort of change my accent a little bit and use different words. It got to about February and I had a conversation with the producer and I said 'Look, I'm to have to give this in. I'm getting battered, I'm not suited to co-commentary, I'm not sure if I even like it.'
And he said 'What about just being yourself? Just using language that you'd use.' and I remember I used things like 'bingo time', the Torres thing, and then started using phrases that I would use in everyday life. And then all of a sudden I started to realise that it was better and I enjoyed it more, it was just me talking about football with somebody next to me.
Tubes then suggested that Neville was the "main man" for co-commentary now, but the Man Utd legend was quick to play that down as he did not feel like he was the best around.
No, there's a lot of better co-commentators than me.
Carragher? I've not heard him yet. I was at The Lion King when he did his first one. It's more important.
Neville then elaborated on what he meant by putting on a posh voice.
Rather than doing some sort of accent, he found himself saying things in a certain way that he wouldn't typically use.
It was just trying to be too deliberate, and too precise.
Trying to be... 'Willian will be disappointed with that, won't he?', things like that rather than saying 'That was rubbish.'
It's fair to say that his co-commentary has come on leaps and bounds, and his point about changing how he presented himself is a very interesting one. We see far too many ex-players try punditry only to play a role of what they expect a pundit to be rather than be themselves, but Neville, and Carragher too it must be said, have set the standard for analysis while also getting their personality across.
Carragher would of course pop up numerous times in a look back at Gary Neville's tweets, and you can watch the video in full below.
