Gary Neville doesn’t hand out compliments to Liverpool players lightly. So when the Manchester United legend sat down for a Q&A with The Overlap and was asked to name one Liverpool player he’d actually take at Old Trafford, his answer raised some eyebrows.
He went with Ryan Gravenberch.
Not Mohamed Salah. Not Virgil van Dijk. Not even Dominik Szoboszlai, who Neville briefly considered before settling on the Dutch midfielder. Gravenberch has been at Anfield since 2023, when he moved from Bayern Munich, and has quietly become a fixture in Liverpool’s midfield. Neville sees something there — specifically, a player who fills a hole United desperately needs to plug.
“If you said to me, ‘United, now, who would I take?’, I’d take Gravenberch probably,” Neville said. “He’s the best of the three midfielders that United would need and we need a midfielder desperately.”
That desperation is real. Casemiro left as a free agent at the end of last season after helping United finish third in the Premier League. They already brought in Chelsea’s Andrey Santos. But with Manuel Ugarte now facing a long recovery from an ACL injury, the midfield depth chart looks thin behind Kobbie Mainoo. INEOS is still linked with Aston Villa’s Youri Tielemans and other Premier League proven options.
Gravenberch is probably untouchable, but he fits
The problem for United is that Gravenberch signed a contract running through 2032. Getting him out of Liverpool would take a miracle and a check the Glazers probably don’t want to write. But Neville’s logic makes sense. United need a midfielder who can link play, win duels, and not disappear in big moments. Gravenberch does all of that.
Neville also pushed back on the idea that Liverpool’s forwards are clearly better than what United already has. He mentioned Bryan Mbeumo, Matheus Cunha, Bruno Fernandes, and Amad Diallo as players he wouldn’t trade straight up for Liverpool’s attacking options. “They’ve got potential to go and do brilliant things but they’ve not proved it yet,” Neville said.
United’s attack looked a lot different after last summer’s spending spree. They added Cunha, Mbeumo, and Benjamin Sesko, and the results showed up on the scoreboard — 69 goals in the league, third most behind only Arsenal and City. Still, there’s chatter that INEOS might be eyeing Harry Kane this summer, so the front line isn’t a finished product either.
But the midfield is the real problem. Neville is right that Gravenberch would be an ideal partner for Mainoo. But Liverpool isn’t selling. So United has to find someone else who can do what Gravenberch does, before the season starts and the gap in the middle of the park becomes a crisis.
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