Gary Neville says that Manchester United legend Sir Alex Ferguson used to get worked up by the way Arsenal greats Thierry Henry and Robert Pires played football.
Battles between United and Arsenal - and by extension, Ferguson and Arsene Wenger - were a staple of the Premier League in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the rivalry often determining who would end up as English football's top dogs.
And Ferguson used to implore his players not to allow Henry and Pires to do what they wanted on the pitch.
"Sir Alex always felt that players like Thierry Henry and Robert Pires had an air about them that they couldn’t be tackled," Neville told Sky Sports.
"He said he didn’t see players getting around them or tackling them. He said the opposition were too busy planning how to swap shirts with them. That would psychologically get into our heads.
"He’d say things like ‘I don’t want [Patrick] Vieira refereeing this game today, or [Tony] Adams, or [Martin] Keown' – he’d say little things like that without ever encouraging us to intimidate the referee. People thought that happened but it didn’t.
"But those little things were the difference in matches. "
Neville adds that Ferguson's "element of madness" helped United be so successful.
"Sir Alex always said ‘find a way to win’ – there was an element of madness to us in the final 10 minutes of matches but that’s the risks he took to win matches.
"Not just in title run-ins, Sir Alex would identify weaknesses in the opposition, work out what kind of records we’d have under certain referees, at certain grounds – he would really pinpoint the areas of weakness in the opposition."
