Chelsea: Gary Neville stands by 'billion-pound bottle jobs' jibe
Gary Neville has double-downed on his description of Chelsea as "billion-pound bottle jobs" after watching Mauricio Pochettino's side "shrink" in the Carabao Cup Final defeat to Liverpool.
The former Manchester United defender made the withering assessment of Chelsea in the aftermatch of Virgil van Dijk's exta-time winner, which sealed a record 10th League Cup for the Reds.
Liverpool have been hit hard by injuries in recent weeks, meaning the likes of Mohamed Salah, Darwin Nunez and Diogo Jota were all missing, but rose to the occasion in extra time as Chelsea's lavishly-assembled squad appeared to fade.
Asked on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football to clarify his remarks - which did not go down well with the Chelsea fanbase - Neville admitted the tag may have been "harsh" but did not retract the statement.
He said: "I feel bad now! No, look, I’m not going to sit here and say it was an instinctive commentary moment… I mean, it was instinctive because I didn’t know what was going to happen in extra-time,” Neville explained.
"But Peter [Drury, lead commentator] did about 35 seconds after the goal and Carra [Jamie Carragher, fellow pundit] did about 25 seconds and I was getting angrier.
"If you hear my commentary during extra-time, I was getting angrier with Chelsea from the first minute of extra-time until two minutes to go because I could smell the fear in Chelsea from the very first minute of extra-time when I said: 'Why are they sitting off them? Why are they letting these young lads grow?', and then Jurgen Klopp started to grow.
"If you remember, there was a chorus, a song, that Liverpool fans were singing because they could smell the blood, they could smell the fear in those blue shirts.
I could smell the fear in Chelsea from the very first minute of extra-time
Gary Neville
"I got to half-time of extra-time and I said: ‘somehow, Mauricio Pochettino and all those players have got to work out that if they got into this position at the start of the season and told themselves they’ve got 15 minutes against a Liverpool team that have only got two players that would make their starting XI normally, that they would snap their hand off!’
"Grab this opportunity, don’t have regrets! Just from a playing point of view, the idea of a team not seizing the day, seizing the moment, grabbing the opportunity, all those things we say to each other in lives as young people, that we want a team to grab this moment. Chelsea shrunk.
"I used the word 'shrunk' and maybe 'bottle' is a very strong word, but playing with absolute fear, froze, whatever you want to call it, that’s what we saw in extra-time.
"Ultimately, I don’t want that tag to stick with them because the reality is that there are a lot of talented young players there who may go on.
