"He was one of those players to whom you could say: 'Phil, I want you to run up that hill, then come back and cut down that tree.' And he would say: 'Right, boss, where's the chainsaw?'" Sir Alex Ferguson, My Autobiography

We are sitting in a ground-floor office at Manchester United's training ground and Phil Neville is reminiscing about the time Old Trafford serenaded him with the old Joy Division number usually reserved for Ryan Giggs.

It goes back to Rene Meulensteen's early days in Manchester when the now Fulham manager was brought in as a skills specialist. "His big thing was that in a game, under the most pressure, you need something to get you out of trouble," Neville says. "And me being a full-back, he thought I should learn how to do a step-over."

Neville would have 30-minute sessions with Meulensteen, along with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Ruud van Nistelrooy. "I was serious about it. I practised for six months and then we had a game against Southampton and the opportunity just came to try it out. I turned round, feeling quite pleased with myself, and the first thing I saw was Giggsy and Becks [David Beckham] laughing their heads off."

That was the point the crowd broke out with a chorus of: "Phil will tear you apart again." Emboldened, Neville had another go. This time it was a double step-over. "And Roy Keane was on his way over. 'Stop effing about and play football,' were the exact words."

Neville loves to chat about the old days. They all do from that era and Phil, like brother Gary, always leaves the impression that football - and specifically Manchester United - is what makes the most sense in his life. He will look you in the eye when he says his eight years at Everton were just as special but there is something telling about his response when he is asked what it means to be back at his first club, working for David Moyes. Neville simply blows out his cheeks. "The best four months of my career," is his verdict.Better actually than playing? "Without a shadow of a doubt. I've found something I always wanted to do.

"I'm in for work at 6.30am and one of the last to leave. I don't want to go home. We have beds at the training ground and I go home sometimes and say to my wife: 'Do you know something, I didn't want to leave work today?' It's not a slight on my wife. It's just a great position to be in when you love your job so much. This training ground… you don't want to go home. It feels like it is your home."

Nobody should be surprised. Neville also tells the story about the day he left the club, in 2005, and the sledgehammer of different emotions driving to Wilmslow, after an invitation to Ferguson's house, for the conversation he knew would change his life. Julie, his wife, stayed in the car and when Ferguson found out he sent his wife Cathy out to fetch her. Julie, devastated, burst into tears. She simply could not bring herself to go in.

"Inside - and this is the weird thing - it was probably one of the most magical moments of my career," Neville says. "We were in his front room, having a cup of tea and he was plotting my next career move, where I was going, how I would play, everything. I went outside and my wife was in tears. But it wasn't done in a cold office. It was done with warmth, like going round to your Mum and Dad's for some advice." He pauses. "But don't get me wrong, I went home and cried my eyes out for 24 hours."

Ferguson, he says, has taught him more than he could ever explain when it comes to man-management. "I remember him pulling me at Nou Camp before the Champions League final and saying: 'We wouldn't win titles without Phil Neville.' Probably one of the biggest disappointments of my career, being left out of a European Cup final, yet he made me feel the most special person in the world."

We are talking because Neville is about to encounter Everton for the first time since everything changed in the summer. He, like Moyes, has had this date imprinted on his mind ever since the fixtures came out – two men with different priorities now but with a part of them that permanently belongs to Goodison as well.

"I didn't win a trophy with Everton but that time is just as special as my playing career at United. People leave United and tend to drift out of the game. I actually think I became a better player and a better person. I proved a lot of doubters wrong. I was there on my own. It was a culture shock, being out of the bubble of Manchester United, but I thrived. It was the making of me."

His memories offer a great insight into his own personality but also that of Moyes. "He made me captain after a month. If I'm honest, I didn't want it. I just wanted to bed in and get a few mates. I really didn't want the captaincy and for 18 months it was really difficult, the most difficult period of my career.

"There was a lot of scepticism from the other players. I was close to the boss and I can understand if they were suspicious of me. They had just finished fourth, they had qualified for the Champions League. They had some brilliant characters in that team – [Alan] Stubbs, [Lee] Carsley, [Thomas] Gravesen, [Alessandro] Pistone and many others – and the boss had put all that faith in me.

"David Moyes, from day one, wanted me to lead that team every single day. He wanted me to set a level of professionalism and a standard the rest would follow. And he would never let me fall beneath those standards. He challenged me every day, threatened me every day. There would be days when I might think 'I feel a bit tired today' but the minute he came on the training field I knew he wanted me to be at the front of the running, to be the most intense, to lead the others.

"I was replacing a great guy in David Weir, and he was brilliant, but it did take the others longer to accept me. The fans too, maybe. I had nailed my flag to the mast. Everyone knew I was a United fan. Liverpool's supporters used to sing: 'Your captain's a Manc'. Gary's relationship with Liverpool didn't help either. I really don't think I was properly accepted until I made that tackle on [Cristiano] Ronaldo."

You will remember the one: Neville flying in on the young Ronaldo, who was already on the floor, during a game at Goodison in October 2008. "It's a great club, Everton. You don't just go there to work, you have to be part of the family. And until then, I wasn't part of the family. I was like a stepson. I made that tackle and I became a son.

"The kit-man at Everton, Jimmy Martin, always says 'part of the gang'. To be fair, he said it since day one but I never felt it until that tackle. I was one of them. And by the way, I didn't do it on purpose. But I still had Giggsy, Rio [Ferdinand], Fletch [Darren Fletcher], all in my face."

He always wanted to be a coach/manager, though he talks so well he could easily have joined Gary "on the dark side" (the media). As a youngster in the Class of '92 – and, really, you do not need to be a United fan to enjoy Gabe Turner's film – Neville was brought up on the tough love of the formidable Eric Harrison. He regards himself "more a Brian Kidd… I love positivity, I'm always saying 'well done', maybe too often in fact."

Drawing on his own experiences – "a squad player," he says matter-of-factly –he has also taken great care to work closely with the players out of the team. Wilfried Zaha, for example. "Wilf is a diamond. People say: 'Why is he not playing?' But we're seeing the same with [Marouane] Fellaini and we've seen it with Vida [Nemanja Vidic] and Patrice [Evra] in the past. The first six months... forget the games, just being a Manchester United footballer, the intensity of training, the expectation, it's really hard. It blows you away."

Neville, with a bed upstairs if he wants it, would rather be nowhere else.