Risk and reward…

It seems such an obvious win.

Take a Manchester United legend that embodies the very essence of the club, whisk in his Liverpool counterpart of the same esteem - foremost of rivals, who deconstructed games in a more cerebral way than most of their colleagues, two men never short a strong opinion - and whip them into the benchmark of football programming.

There is no better partnership in the game's broadcasting, but there initially wasn’t total conviction that the Neville-Carragher combination would work.

The former had been manning the show alongside Ed Chamberlain from the 2011-12 season and in early 2013, Sky decided they wanted the Liverpool defender on board when he retired.

“I actually said ‘no’ to doing the show when I first got offered it and was told that I would still be doing it,” Neville recalls.

“After a few months, I remember telling the producer at the time that we have to make sure the show evolves otherwise it will get stale and I’ll get stale. We couldn’t let that happen.

“I remember I was in Norway at an event for United supporters when the call came through from the producer. He said, ‘listen Jamie Carragher has been heavily courted by another TV station, we want him at Sky, but he’s told us that he’ll only be interested if it’s prominent shows. He wants to do stuff like MNF.

“I replied that it was absolutely the right thing to bring him over. A lot of people at Sky thought it was a massive risk because the show was successful and they were resistant to change, but I was a supporter of the move.

“If I said, ‘no way, I’m not working with him’ it would have had a big influence, but I was 100% up for it.

“When Jamie came in it was a risk because you don’t know how the chemistry is going to be, how the public are going to receive it, but it was obvious from early on it would work with some of the comments.

“I said something about a burglar and that was it then, we just knew we'd work off each other really well.” That exchange came on August 19, 2013 during Carragher’s debut on the show as City scorched Newcastle United 4-0.

They were discussing Robin van Persie’s brace for United against Swansea that weekend and his ability to thieve space regardless of how tight defenders are.

Gary: “Marking Robin van Persie is like having a burglar in the house – but you don’t know which room he’s in.”

Jamie: “You’d be under the bed.”

Gary: “You’d be the burglar!”

And so began the endless stream of quick-witted soundbites they have supplied, with Carragher highlighting “no-one wants to grow up and be a Gary Neville” as his cause célèbre of the show.

“I wasn't on social media back then, which is a big regret of mine,” he teases. “I wish I was on just to see how it took off on Twitter.”

The Bootle-born straight-talker admits there was a helpful naivety at play when deciding to join Sky and their flagship offering. “I wasn’t daunted at all,” Carragher says.

“I didn’t really think of the chemistry we’d need for the show to work. It probably only started to hit me when I was already a few months into TV, when you start to understand the process more, how important that kind of thing is. I was too inexperienced at first to look at the big picture.

“I don’t think anyone really knew what would happen when you threw the two of us together: Sky, Gary, me…”

Hazzard wades in, noting: “It was a big risk at the time, it may not have felt like that to you, but I remember when I first heard about it.

“Scott Malven called me and said: ‘Carra is joining the show” and it was like ‘oh, are we sure about this?’

“We thought what we had was great, it worked, it was well received. No-one really knew how it would impact MNF, but it has definitely made it better.”

The twosome can be “a huge, demanding double pain in the arse” as per one account, but there is appreciation at Sky for how much care they put into every facet of MNF.

“I think they’re brilliant, which makes my job tricky at times because I’ve got to concentrate on what I’m doing, but get absorbed by their answers,” Jones says.

“I don’t know exactly what they’re going to say until we’re actually on air and sometimes I find myself just sat there thinking ‘that’s so good, that is so good’ before going ‘shit, have to concentrate on what I need to do next.’

“It’s great the way they’re able to take all their professionalism and insight and put it into their pieces, which they have to go through really carefully because every word can be misconstrued. And how they’re able to balance all that under the pressure of live TV is incredible.”