Why Arsenal Invincible hated Gary Neville as England and Man United feud revealed

One former Arsenal star has admitted that Gary Neville rubbed him up the wrong way

Former Arsenal defender Martin Keown has explained why he doesn't like Gary Neville. The 58-year-old made 449 appearances across two spells with the Gunners, with his final season the infamous 2003/24 'Invincibles' campaign, where they didn't lose once in the Premier League.

He won three top-flight titles, the FA Cup three times, and the European Cup Winners' Cup once. Keown is renowned as one of Arsenal's greatest ever defenders and was also capped 43 times by England.

As for Neville, 48, he kickstarted his career at Manchester United and ended up staying as a one-club man, featuring 602 times for his boyhood team over a 19-year spell. In that period, Neville won the Premier League eight times, the FA Cup on three occasions, and the Champions League twice. Neville made 85 appearances for England, with his final cap coming in 2007 during a friendly defeat against Spain.

Keown and Neville endured some tasty battles on the pitch with Arsenal and United, but it's during their time with England that the ex-Arsenal centre-back didn't see eye to eye with his teammate.

"Gary did rub me up the wrong way with small things," Keown told the Daily Mail. "When we travelled abroad with England, there was no assigned seating on the plane and Gary was always first on so he could take the seat right at the front with the extra leg room, even though he was far from being the tallest.

"When it came to the dispute about whether we were going to land in London or Manchester, you can bet Gary was having his say on Fergie’s [Sir Alex Ferguson] behalf. He was like a union shop steward.

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"On the pitch, whenever we played United, I would seek out the referee and point out that Gary was taking an illegal throw-in, with one hand behind the ball and the other to the side, rather than one on each side. It drove me mad and I recently asked two top former referees for their interpretation of the throw-in law to see if he had been cheating all those years. One said yes and the other no, so maybe I should just get over it.

"At one England get-together, Gary approached me and said somebody at our club had been complaining about his throw-ins and did I know who it was. I said I had no idea…"

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