Gary Neville hits out at Pep Guardiola in Sir Alex Ferguson comparison

Manchester City kicked off the Premier League season on Friday evening away to newly-promoted Burnley.

The Sky Blues had little issue dispatching the Clarets, easing to a 3-0 win to put them top of the table.

Erling Haaland scored twice in the first half to give City a two-goal lead at the break, but when the whistle blew for half-time, Pep Guardiola was clearly not happy with his star striker:

“You weren’t moving with three minutes left,” Guardiola said in scenes captured by a Sky camera. “With one minute left we had to make long balls, completely opposite, it’s the right tempo right now.”

Speaking at half-time on Sky Sports, Gary Neville said the incident would divide opinion, adding that he did not believe that Sir Alex Ferguson would have reacted in the way that Guardiola did.

Neville said: “There’ll be some people who’ll love the intensity of that and say that that’s why he’s the best manager on the planet. Then there’ll be others who will say that you shouldn’t do that in a public forum, grabbing his arm in front of the cameras.

“I played for one of the most intense managers in the history of the game - but he’d never have done that on the pitch in such a way.”

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