Neville calls for Eriksson commitment

England defender Gary Neville has urged coach Sven-Goran Eriksson to pledge his future to the national team so the players can concentrate on winning major honours.

Eriksson’s current deal expires after the 2006 World Cup but the Football Association have offered the Swede an extension to 2008.

Manchester United right-back Neville believes he has seen many of the qualities in Eriksson which are present in club boss Alex Ferguson – which can only be of benefit to England.

“Sven is a lot quieter, they are both very successful managers but they go about things slightly differently,” he said.

“Our manager (Ferguson) demands the absolute best from you at all times and he gets it out of you.

“You couldn’t ask for a better manager. Sven seems to do that at England, he gets the best out of you as well.

“I think it is important he stays with England. The worst thing about England over the last six or seven years was we have had three or four managers and there was no stability.

“This is probably the longest period of stability we have had and if he can go on for another four or five years we will get better.

“The continued success we have had here is down to Sir Alex Ferguson, because he knows every individual player and he knows the club inside out.”

Neville also revealed the fall-out from the Rio Ferdinand affair still rankles with the England squad and that the players were closer than first thought to pulling out of the crucial Euro 2004 qualifier in Turkey.

The Manchester United right-back, as one of the senior players, was widely believed to be one of the ringleaders who led calls for a boycott of the game in Istanbul following Ferdinand’s omission after it emerged he missed a drugs test.

Football Association officials played down the seriousness of the threat and England qualified for next summer’s European Championships in Portugal after a 0-0 draw.

However, Neville claimed a strike was a real possibility.

“It was pretty close. We were brassed off – we still are,” he said.

“It was just frustrating for us, we didn’t like what had happened to him and still don’t like what has happened to him.

“We just did what we felt was right. Probably the best thing that happened was we made the point, because it showed we had something about us.”

Ferdinand missed a random drugs test at United’s Carrington training ground back in September and after a drawn-out disciplinary process was banned for eight months following a two-day hearing at Bolton’s Reebok Stadium nearly a fortnight ago.

The player is still deciding whether to appeal against the severity of the penalty – Manchester City’s Christian Negouai was fined £2,000 (€2,826) for a similar offence last season – but must do so a week before the suspension begins on 12 January.

But Neville revealed United would stand by Ferdinand no matter what the outcome.

“He will always get support from his team-mates and his club. The manager here will never hang a player out to dry. We would always back a team-mate no matter what they did,” he told MUTV.

“People make mistakes, do things that are wrong. You can’t say ‘He has done something wrong so we forget about him’, you get behind him, that is the way life is.

“It has brought the dressing room closer. We feel for Rio because while he made a mistake we don’t think he should be missing matches. We are human beings, not robots.

“That makes us (Manchester United) stronger and it always has done.”