Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher was speaking on Sky Sports about some of his greatest moments against Manchester United. Fellow pundit Gary Neville also brought about a Manchester United perspective on things but we all only want to read about what Carra said, right?
The former defender has played against United multiple times but one or two incidents stay fresh in his memory. Liverpool faced their great rivals in March 2011 and while the Reds did win the game, the match will be remembered for one horror tackle by Carragher.
The Englishman tackled Nani early in the first half and it sent the recent Euro 2016 winner sprawling to the ground. While both sets of players tried to calm things down, Carra did have a bit of a smirk about Wayne Rooney’s reaction and Nani’s too.
“Not one of my finer moments.
“It was a bit of a dive from Nani, wasn’t it? I tell you what my best memory of that is. Not so much the tackle but Wayne Rooney’s reaction.
“I was on favourable terms with the referee Phil Dowd.
“I got him on my own, pulled him and said ‘he just beat me with skills’. Everyone is fighting and I got him over like an experienced pro.
“Then Rooney comes over and says ‘you won’t believe it, he’s crying’.”
Was a red card
Gary Neville did ask Carragher if the tackle was worthy of a red card and the former Liverpool defender did oblige by accepting it could have been his marching orders in the game.
“Oh yeah. I’ve seen the reaction of all the players but like I said, I got Phil Dowd on his own, had a word with him and we came to some sort of a deal.”
Carra also spoke about why he had to be shifted to that position and how Sir Alex Ferguson tried to take advantage of the mismatch. The Liverpool man dismissed any statements of him moving to right-back just to injure Nani.
“No, what happened was that someone got injured so I went from centre-back to right-back and as soon as that happened, Alex Ferguson put Nani to the left wing straight away.
So I’m thinking ‘I’m either going to get tight, I’m going to tackle him or I’m going to foul him. There’s no way I’m letting him get the ball and run at me’. So I’ve got there and the ball did jump up at me, I went for it and it just disappeared so I caught him on the shin.”
Red Monday on the cards
Liverpool and Manchester United lock horns on Monday and it is going to be another great encounter to keep both sets of fans on the edge of their seats. The Reds have the slight edge going into this game but you can never predict these kinds of games.
One thing is a certainty, there will be a number of tough challenges like the one Carra pulled off and there will be a lot of cards thrown about as well.
