Gary Neville recalls secret to Ryan Giggs maintaining Man Utd form for so long

Ryan Giggs would go into minute details to make sure he maintained his performance levels at Manchester United, according to his former teammate Gary Neville.

The Welshman is United's all-time appearance record holder having played for the club a remarkable 963 times across 24 years in the first-team picture.

He picked up 13 Premier League titles under Sir Alex Ferguson, and was a key part of the club's sustained success under the Scot after he broke into the team as a teenager.

Neville was an important element in that success too, picking up eight league titles, and in a conversation recalling the managerial abilities of Glenn Hoddle when he was England boss, Neville relayed a conversation he had with Giggs about maintaining his levels.

In a Sky Sports chat in which he claimed that the methods favoured by Hoddle - who was England boss between 1996 and 1999 - were ahead of their time, Nevile said: “With Glenn you weren't allowed butter on your toast, weren't allowed milk with your cereal in the morning, things like that.

“I remember Giggsy later in his career, when we were starting to learn about nutrition, and I asked him, 'what would you do if you were in bad form?'

“He said, 'I'd take the butter off my toast to get that extra 0.01 per cent.'

“Glenn was doing that in 1997 and 1998, he was prescribing what we would eat, how we would train. It was really, really detailed. He was prescribing every detail.”

Giggs made his United debut in 1990, before going on to hang up his boots in 2014 following a brief stint as the club's caretaker manager.