Former Manchester United full-back Gary Neville has praised the club's current players and manager Sir Alex Ferguson for the way they have responded to losing the Premier League title to rivals Manchester City last season.

A stoppage-time goal from Sergio Aguero on the final day of the campaign allowed City to claim the trophy ahead of United on goal difference.

However, rather than build on that success, City find themselves 15 points behind United, with the two teams due to meet at Old Trafford this evening.

Ahead of that match, Neville has revealed that he never saw the "power shift" coming that many pundits and media outlets had predicted.

"If you check the newspaper archives from the last day of last season, all the reports spoke of Manchester City's domination, and how they were going to win the championship for the next four years. If I read power shift once, then I must have read it a thousand times in the space of a week last May," he told United Review.

"Those reports misunderstood Manchester United. Here is a manager and players who don't understand phrases like power shift. They just make them more determined to ram such phrases back down people's throats.

"Everybody was heralding a new era and asking if United's dominance was over. Fast forward to today and there's a 15-point lead."

A victory tonight would leave United requiring just four points to regain the title.