Gary Neville: Liverpool deserved to go out of Champions League

Manchester United captain Neville expressed no sympathy for the plight of Rafa Benitez’s troubled team, pointing out that United’s exit from the group stages back in 2005 would have been greeted with delight on Merseyside.

“You get what you deserve as a team, don’t you?” he said. “We are where we are because we deserve to be there. And it is the same with Liverpool.

“We went out at the group stage ourselves a few years back. They haven’t performed well enough in the Champions League this season to get the results, simple as that.”

Neville’s bitterness towards Liverpool will have been intensified by the production of a mickey-taking film about their 2005 Champions League final comeback against AC Milan, featuring cameos from Anfield stars Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher,

in which he is portrayed as “Rat Boy”, who hates Scousers.

United manager Sir Alex Ferguson is caricatured as a whiskey-swilling drunk in the comedy by Liverpool playwright Dave Kirby.

But outspoken Neville, 34, has been equally hard on United’s youngsters following the shock 1-0 Champions League home defeat to Beskitas.

“It was very disappointing,” he said. “But we just didn’t do enough in the last third.

“Conceding a goal in the first half set us back a little bit and gave Besiktas something to hang on to.

“But usually we would expect to score a goal in what was something like 96 or 97 minutes at Old Trafford and we didn’t do that.

“Their keeper made a couple of great saves but our decision-making and final pass wasn’t good enough at times.

“Some of our play in the last third was not decisive enough. We needed to take our chances.

“I don’t think the game was too big for the youngsters.

“They handled it well but we just needed that goal, and the fact is we didn’t do enough to get that goal. And that was disappointing because we always expect to score at Old Trafford.”

After taking maximum points from their first three games to effectively seal qualification for the knockout stages, United still find themselves needing a point from their final game in Wolfsburg next month to finish as Group B leaders.

But Neville, like Ferguson, is unsure whether it will be an advantage.

“We could finish second and get a favourable draw or finish top and get a disastrous draw,” he said.

“The Champions League seems a bit topsy-turvy this season with the way results are going. It is down to the luck of the draw. But whoever we get, it will be difficult.”