Steve McManaman has hit back at Gary Neville’s claim that Liverpool had a mentality problem back in the 90s.
McManaman and his Liverpool team-mates were forced to watch on as United collected trophy after trophy during the period, even though the Reds had the likes of Robbie Fowler, Jamie Redknapp and Michael Owen in their ranks.
However, many of the Reds' stars were often dubbed 'The Spice Boys' due to their off-field antics - which Neville felt gave United the edge when it came to achieving success.
"Think of Liverpool and the Spice Boys, they didn’t get that nickname for nothing," the former United man recently said.
"They were still going out and drinking. We weren’t."
But hitting back at the claims made by Neville, McManaman feels mentality had nothing to do with Liverpool's lack of success compared to United's, and instead it was down to the quality each side had at their disposal.
"We just had a few more failings certainly than the side now but against the teams back then that just pipped us to the title," he told The Metro.
"You know on our day we could beat the majority of them, we could outplay the majority of them over the season.
"We may have played more attractive football or scored more goals than them but it’s the couple of failings that we had. Maybe our rivals had a better squad or a couple of better players."
Before adding: "I don’t think it was a mentality thing or anything like that. It’s just every single year there’s one team that beats everyone else unfortunately and if you don’t get to the top of the mountain then you can’t say you achieved it.
"That was one thing we all look back on and think were we good enough, we were on our day but over a 38-game period we probably didn’t just have enough."
