After Gary "Gary" Neville's sending off during Saturday's big game against Manchester City, Alternative LFC has been enquiring into the state of mind of the diminutive Mancunian stoat.



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After his pathetic dive, and the childish tantrum which followed, Gary aimed a head butt at Scouser Steve McManaman and proceeded to try and fight with Joey Barton and Robbie Fowler. This incident was tantamount to a nervous breakdown for Manchester United's PFA representative and long established shop steward. Alternative LFC delved into the circumstances surrounding his emotional collapse.





If there's a fine line between love and hate, then this pair should get a hotel room...

We called his wife, Bella Emberg, who had this to say:



"Gary often wakes up in the night, screaming 'Boys From The Blackstuff!! Boys From The Blackstuff!!' It is incredibly disturbing to see him like this. Recently it's been getting worse.



"The other day 'Strawberry Fields Forever' came on Mancury105 and Gary just flipped. 'Turn the Scouse bastards off!" He shouted this again and again until I turned the radio off. Then he turned to me, red-faced and said 'What does that smug Scouse bastard Lennon mean by 'Nothing is real'? Tell me that, Bella. Tell me that!





Bella continued: I made Scouse for tea on Friday and Gary went ballistic. He started slapping the floor screaming: Its called Hot-Pot, Bella. Lancashire Hot-Pot, we made it first!! We cant even say the S word in our house any more. Im really starting to worry about him."





Gary's closest friend in the country, perhaps only friend, who preferred not to be named, we'll hypothetically call him Phil, said:



"It's not just his hatred of all things Scouse, but theres an incredible animosity felt towards him by his fellow professionals. Its actually quite embarrassing for us United lads when we go on the England get-togethers. I mean, Carra rips him to shreds every day and it gets quite pitiful. If there is a more disliked man in the professional game then I don't know him."





We asked Carl Gustav Jung, pioneer of modern Psychology, for his opinion on this sensitive issue. We waited a long time and then went home. Turns out he's been dead 43 years.

Phil is himself a professional footballer. "But the Scouse thing gets worse every week. You know, he threw a party when Brookside got cancelled? Well I say a party, it was just Bella and me and him. He did invite some other people, well one other person, but the EasyJet from Madrid was fully booked that weekend, he said."





Bella: "When we were watching the African Cup of Nations (the competition formerly known as the African Nations Cup) and Titi Camara came on he just flipped out. He threw the telly across the room. It was terrible. He was ranting and raving. In the eighteen months we've been married he's never told me about his hatred of Titi. I wonder where it comes from."





Phil expanded: "When McManaman called him a cheat matters just came to a head for poor Gary. He responded with all he had left; his utter hatred of those the other end of the M62."





Our resident psychological expert, Dr Harold Chroenen, PhD, has mixed feelings about the Neville case:





"While the professional side of me would love to treat him, as Mr. Ferguson has requested of me on many occasions, I, like his fellow professionals and the general public at large, find him an odious, contemptible little worm.







Gary likes nothing better after a game than to perform a striptease to the accompaniment of Survivor's 'Eye of the Tiger'.

A preliminary examination of the public manifestation of Neville's hatred of Scousers suggests to me real feelings of inadequacy which were cultivated as he watched Liverpool win trophy after trophy during his youth. Unfortunately, the undoubted success he has had has done nothing to relieve this.



"Essentially what we have here is an "angry young man" with a chip on his shoulder. His hatred of Liverpool which must have fostered over this period is not a loathing, rather, tantamount to love. He probably appreciated Liverpool's football in their successful period and this has left him with emotional ambivalence. He is blurring the lines between the two.





"Going further, any Freudian analysis of his head butt could come to the conclusion that Gary's ambivalence towards Liverpool may well have combined with his courtly love of David "Becks" Beckham, currently in Madrid. Seeing that good Scouse lad, Steve McManaman, call him a cheat will have shocked him to his core.



He may well believe that "Becks" Beckham has cheated on him; he has left their love affair by decamping to Madrid. Gary probably associates Steve McManaman with Madrid as well as Liverpool and the combination of his violent, disturbed ambivalence towards Liverpool coupled with his unrequited, spurn passion for David "Becks" Beckham may well have resulted in this head butting incident."





Alternative LFC is hopeful that Gary gets some treatment soon as the madness has to stop. We also hope that Manchester Uniteds supporters stop singing about Garys hatred of Scousers in order to support him. In fact, that they stop singing about Scousers full stop and instead sing about their own team.









Words: Neil Atkinson & Daniel Fitzsimmons







