“Gary will have a place at Manchester United forever.”

As his career winds down, Gary Neville will invariably thinking about his future and what it holds.

Of late he has struggled with injury thus there has been a lot of speculation on his playing future with some news sources reporting that he will indeed bring down the curtain on what has been a glittering career. More recently following the departures of both Richard Keys and Andy Gray, he has been linked with a role as a pundit for Sky.

With so many avenues open for him, Sir Alex has spoken on his ward’s future:

“Gary will have a place at Manchester United forever. Of course I would like him to stay. I don’t know if he’d make a decent pundit. He’s not got the experience. Obviously there is a bit of speculation about who replaces Andy Gray and Richard Keys, but it is not my agenda.

I don’t know about this being Gary’s last season as a player, anyway. He has an ankle injury at the moment but maybe he’ll be back in training next week. I think footballers should enjoy their football as much as they can. His body will tell him it’s the right time, like Edwin van der Sar feels it is the right time for him.

The remarkable thing about Gary Neville is that he keeps coming back from injuries. He is an amazing man, an outstanding person.”

Of course he has also been spoken of as a potential heir to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer as manager of the reserves and has already taken coaching badges thus Sir Alex also spoke of Neville possibly joining the coaching staff and the work he already does with the younger players at the club:

“He’s definitely got coaching abilities and leadership qualities. He looks after the young players. I don’t know why they have agents when they’ve got Gary Neville.

Gary is like a rat up a drainpipe. He’s sorted out contracts for a lot of the young players and they owe him a debt. When he walks into my office I think, ‘bloody hell, here we go. Agony’. But I’d rather have that than dealing with an agent because you know he’ll do the best for the boy.”