Roy Keane says Gary Neville is a “lucky b*****d’ that United failed to sign Stuart Pearce

Roy Keane has called Gary Neville a “lucky b*****d”.

Roy Keane, Gary Neville and England legend Stuart Pearce were speaking on The Overlap when Keane joked that his teammate Neville was “always a lucky b*****d”.

The trio were discussing Alex Ferguson’s transfers during the early 1990s and how Ferguson wrote in his book that he would have liked to have added more defensive reinforcements.

Nottingham Forest boss Brian Clough however, was typically stubborn and refused to let his star defender Pearce leave for the Red Devils. In fact, he refused to even answer the phone.

Clough ignores Ferguson’s Stuart Pearce call.

Ferguson wrote in his book ‘Manging My Life’: “I would have been happier if I could have made further defensive improvement by luring Stuart Pearce away from Nottingham Forest.

“But Brian Clough ensured that I was given no chance to woo his left-back, a player I had long coveted, one whose courage, confidence in his own ability and competitive temperament suggested he would be an ideal wearer of United’s colours.

“I tried to buy Stuart, but Cloughie would not answer the phone!”

Roy Keane calls Gary Neville a ‘lucky b*****d’

“Bryan Robson tapped us up and said we’re interested in you,” Pearce said on The Overlap.

“You [United] weren’t winning anything at the time – Forest were a better proposition.

“But I think Sir Alex was desperate to do it. He said somewhere that he drove because Cloughie wouldn’t take his phone calls about me, so he drove to Nottingham and sat in the car park and waited for him to come out the door.”

It was at that point when Neville commented that he might have never broken into the Manchester United first eleven if Pearce had joined.

By adding left-back Pearce to the squad, it is very possible that Ferguson would have played Denis Irwin at right-back at Neville’s expense.

“We could have won more then!” exclaimed Keane as he imagined Irwin on one side and Pearce on the other.

“You’ve always been a lucky b*****d,” he told Neville jokingly. Then he turned: “Oh, if only. You (Pearce) on one side and Denis? Proper full-backs.”