After giving one of the better takes on Roy Keane, the player, that we've heard in a long time, Phil Neville also had special praise for another Ireland captain in his former teammate Seamus Coleman on Off The Ball on Monday night.
Neville was among the hundreds of footballers who wished Coleman well after the horrible injury he sustained against Wales, and he reinforced that while talking to Joe Molloy and Kevin Kilbane as he expressed his belief that the Killybegs man will come back better than ever.
The BBC pundit also revealed that he knew that Coleman was a serious player from the very first training session he had with the Everton first-team, as he feared nobody and was willing to throw his weight around with the established professionals.
Look, it's a cliché but you say straight away, and you say straight away because the first training session he came and did with us, and he was raw at the time, but he went, and he did not give a damn who he was up against, he just went hell for leather, 100% into the tackle, smashing everybody, and he had no fear.
When you see somebody with that sort of attitude, you've just got to think 'this lad's got a chance'.
But Neville's highest praise for Coleman was kept for his description of what it was like to play as a right-back with Coleman picked to play right-midfield, as David Moyes liked to do regularly in the Irishman's early career on Merseyside.
Neville recalled one game in particular where Coleman nullified the threat of Gareth Bale, then at Tottenham, so much so that he didn't believe it when he himself was named man of the match.
He was a right winger at the time, and I used to play right-back, and if I could have had Seamus Coleman about eight years before, I think I'd still be playing football now because he used to run, run, run, he used to defend for me, back-track for me.
I marked Gareth Bale one game, and I got the man of the match award, and how I got that and they didn't give it to Seamus I don't know. I never once had a 1 v 1 because Seamus kept coming back covering for me all the time. He's a brilliant, brilliant player.
I just hope that he keeps positive, which I know he will, because he loves football and this would have hurt him and hit him hard, but I think he's come back bigger and stronger.
Funnily enough, we think we recall that game, and if we're correct in thinking that it was a 2-1 win for Everton over Spurs in January of 2011, then Seamus Coleman actually scored the winner in that game with a header, making Neville's selection of man of the match even more unusual.
However, this footage on YouTube of Fizzer nutmegging Gareth Bale and sending Peter Crouch to the shops may have tipped it in his favour:
It was seriously enjoyable to listen to Neville think of every superlative he could to describe Coleman as both a player and a person, and we really can't wait until we can enjoy watching him out on that pitch again.
You can listen to Phil Neville's interview with Off The Ball in full over on Newstalk.com.
