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Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has no hesitation in declaring Gary Neville to be the best English right-back of the Premier League era.

Neville announced his retirement on Wednesday, ending a stellar career that has brought him eight Premier League titles and a Champions League triumph, plus 85 England caps.

"Best English right-back in the Premier League? Certainly," Wenger said. "If you look at his record, he has won absolutely everything and with the number of games he has played, he is without a doubt the best."

Although Neville's talent is in danger of being underplayed, Wenger concurs with the widespread view that the Bury-born star achieved the levels he did through sheer force of will and persistence.

"I respect what he has done a lot because he was certainly not one of the most talented players in the league," he said. "But what he has achieved is consistency.

"His record is down to intelligence and motivation - he is an example to players who are maybe less gifted than the Ryan Giggses or the David Beckhams.

"He still made a fantastic career because he is intelligent and highly motivated. He deserves great credit."

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When you joined United, the club you'd always supported, could you have imagined playing 600 games here?
No. When I joined the club I would genuinely have been happy with ten games for United. If you’d said to me then that I’d play 600 games, I'd have said, ‘absolutely no chance’. I don’t think many people at the club would have said it when I first joined. I’d been a centre of excellence kid since I was 11 and saw the talent of the players like Ben Thornley, David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt, my brother, Chris Casper, Keith Gillespie – these were incredibly talented people. I looked around me and thought, ‘I’m not sure I’m as good as some of these lads’. I knew I wasn’t. But we got swept along together. We all believed in it, we were all passionate about playing for United, we all desperately wanted to do it and we listened to the coaches.

We had great coaches in Eric Harrison, Nobby Stiles and Brian Kidd. We’re forever in their debt. They guided us and we just went off and did what they told us to do. We believed in the principles they instilled in us. Then ultimately the manager, who had come down six or seven years before, had a mission to bring young players through. He gave us the opportunity. You could never imagine all those things were going to come together at once and your would evolve. But it does, and when you’re in it you think it’s going to go on forever. You love it, it’s brilliant, you have your ups and downs, but it’s just a great time and the experience I’ve had has been unbelievable.

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