Manchester United legend Gary Neville feels the current champions are only at the beginning of their cycle.

Neville wrote in the Mail on Sunday: "You can always sense when a United team are coming to the end of a cycle and when they are growing.

"This team are definitely in the latter category. There were seven players winning the Premier League for the first time.

"And when I look at players like Jonny Evans, Chris Smalling, Phil Jones, Rafael, Tom Cleverley, Danny Welbeck, Shinji Kagawa and Javier Hernandez, I can see them doing the same as those Dortmund and Bayern players.

"What all those players have in common, and what is crucial to the modern game, is that they can all run - and quickly.

"But I would imagine Sir Alex will have been invigorated from watching Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich and will have thought: 'Right, we missed out this year. But I'm going to get my players into that mentality so that we're going to be there in 2014 and 2015.'

"This United team are on an upward curve. Monday wasn't the summit of their potential achievements. It was one of the smaller peaks along to the way to the summit."