English football can’t always be fun to watch. Not every match has to be a ‘great advert for the Premier League’. Some Sundays just aren’t that ‘Super’ – and that’s okay. However, there was something about last week’s dreadfully dull Manchester derby that really upset Gary Neville – and it wasn’t just the fact that his former club had failed to get one over on their city rivals.

His disappointment ran much deeper than a vested interest in silencing noisy neighbours. As far as Neville was concerned, the dour nature of the draw at Old Trafford was indicative of a more general malaise afflicting the world’s most popular championship.

“It really was quite depressing for me because I think we’re seeing a lot of these types of games,” the former right-back said after making his way from the gantry to the Sky Sports studio. “The Premier League is about thrill, it’s about excitement, it’s about risk – but there was nothing like that today. It was really disappointing. I apologise even for my commentary; I think it let it get to me. I was boring on there too…

“But this robotic nature of not leaving our positions, of basically being micro-managed to within an inch of our lives, of not having any freedom to take any risks to try to win a football match… It’s becoming an illness in the game, it’s becoming a disease in the game.”

Perhaps Paris Saint-Germain, though, have already discovered the antidote…

English football can’t always be fun to watch. Not every match has to be a ‘great advert for the Premier League’. Some Sundays just aren’t that ‘Super’ – and that’s okay. However, there was something about last week’s dreadfully dull Manchester derby that really upset Gary Neville – and it wasn’t just the fact that his former club had failed to get one over on their city rivals.

His disappointment ran much deeper than a vested interest in silencing noisy neighbours. As far as Neville was concerned, the dour nature of the draw at Old Trafford was indicative of a more general malaise afflicting the world’s most popular championship.

“It really was quite depressing for me because I think we’re seeing a lot of these types of games,” the former right-back said after making his way from the gantry to the Sky Sports studio. “The Premier League is about thrill, it’s about excitement, it’s about risk – but there was nothing like that today. It was really disappointing. I apologise even for my commentary; I think it let it get to me. I was boring on there too…

“But this robotic nature of not leaving our positions, of basically being micro-managed to within an inch of our lives, of not having any freedom to take any risks to try to win a football match… It’s becoming an illness in the game, it’s becoming a disease in the game.”

Perhaps Paris Saint-Germain, though, have already discovered the antidote…