Neville makes 'laughable' claim as he addresses Gerrard helping Liverpool

Gary Neville claims there is no way Steven Gerrard will attempt to gee up his Aston Villa players to cause an upset on the final day of the Premier League season by citing his Liverpool relations.

Anfield legend Gerrard will find himself with the power to determine the title's destination on Sunday so long as the Reds defeat Southampton on Tuesday. Should Liverpool win at St Mary's, they will head into their home clash with Wolves one point behind leaders Manchester City.

This means Jurgen Klopp and the Anfield faithful are relying on Gerrard's Villa taking points off the Sky Blues if they are have any chance of domestic glory. Many suspect the Villa Park boss will fire up his players with a view to doing just that on account of his lifetime bond with Liverpool, where he made 710 appearances between 1998 and 2015.

There are also multiple former Reds stars in Gerrard's squad including Philippe Coutinho and Danny Ings, while captain Tyrone Mings is a boyhood Liverpool fan. However, Manchester United icon Neville believes the Villa dressing room will simply "laugh at" their manager if he attempts to bring his former club into the equation this weekend.

"I don't buy into this Steven Gerrard thing at all, the fact that he's going to go there and he's going to get them fired up," Neville said during a chat with Jamie Carragher on Instagram. "Trust me, the Villa players won't give two hoots who they're playing on Sunday. They're not connected to the Liverpool emotion bit.

"Steven Gerrard can't go in and say, 'I'm ex-Liverpool, make sure you win this one for Liverpool.' The players will just laugh at him! So this idea, this Gerrard thing, that he'll go there and win for [Liverpool] is just absolute nonsense. That is not going to happen.

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"The Villa players, none of them [care]. Coutinho, who else is there with connections to Liverpool? Coutinho that's it. Danny Ings. But those Villa players aren't thinking about helping Liverpool at all. Not in any way, shape or form.

"And Steven Gerrard has been giving the same messages to those players for the last few months. I don't buy into this Gerrard thing that's going to happen on Sunday, I don't at all. Stevie Gerrard will want to win the game just for his own professional reasons, so will the players.

"But this idea that he'll be able to get an unbelievable performance out of Villa just because of his emotion and feeling towards Liverpool, don't get caught up in that crap, that is just pure media stuff that."