Paul Scholes | 2011/12 Performances

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We're not going to get a new midfielder in January. Having a few more chances to see a legend in action is just fine.

Regarding what has been said here, I think people's memories betray them. In the days of the PLC we had stock owners getting dividends out of our profits, and Fergie regularly had to battle for money for transfers. I don't think our ownership is the real reason we haven't done anything about the midfield. Obviously it would be easier if we had City like money and could just throw it at someone like Sneidjer, but we don't and that's fine. I guess Fergie thinks our midfielders are better than people think they are and has set the bar high in looking for new ones, which means there aren't that many options and ever fewer who are opened for a move. We're probably not looking for potential beause that we have, we want someone a little older who can slot in quickly. Not easy if that's the bar we have set.
 
On my way to my pit, and thought I'd end the day seeing what the cafe was saying. Loving the posts.

WHAT A DAY!

Started with no confidence of a win, and the very real possibility of losing 3 on the spin, AND being out the cup.

Ended with dumping City on their oh-so-rich backsides, then drawing Poo in the next round, AND....... AND...... AND.......... SCHOLES IS BACK (ello)

WHAT A DAY :-))))
 
Wowi said:
We can easily agree on the bolded, but the million dollar question then is "why?". Lack of money or lack of targets who are willing to move? As almost always, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

I fully agree with you by the way. Young wasn't a critical signing, but it was a good one that added more depth. Young was a relatively cheap signing compared to what a world class midfielder would've cost us I think.

Paul Scholes
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Probably more development time for specific players. If you can hold out for the player to progress, why dump massive amounts on unproven talent. Fergie is not going to dump 10's of millions on a player like Nasri or Carrol who was good for half a season. We want players that will perform year in year out. We won't sign somebody like Lampard who'll go straight to the bench when a new player arrives and then barely get used. That's just pissing money down the drain. Berbatov although good for parts, is probably the reason for this. 30 million and he's benched by a home grown player and a 9 million pound wonder kid.

Scholes fills the gap nicely of an experienced player who plugs a hole that wasn't exactly necessary at the start of the season, but is now. Fergie was right in going into the season with Anderson, Cleverly, Fletcher, Giggs and Carrick. That's 5 good central midfielders. But injuries have played havoc and we struggled.
 
marchi-91 said:
Probably more development time for specific players. If you can hold out for the player to progress, why dump massive amounts on unproven talent. Fergie is not going to dump 10's of millions on a player like Nasri or Carrol who was good for half a season. We want players that will perform year in year out. We won't sign somebody like Lampard who'll go straight to the bench when a new player arrives and then barely get used. That's just pissing money down the drain. Berbatov although good for parts, is probably the reason for this. 30 million and he's benched by a home grown player and a 9 million pound wonder kid.

Scholes fills the gap nicely of an experienced player who plugs a hole that wasn't exactly necessary at the start of the season, but is now. Fergie was right in going into the season with Anderson, Cleverly, Fletcher, Giggs and Carrick. That's 5 good central midfielders. But injuries have played havoc and we struggled.
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He knew Fletch was seriously ill. And Giggs is 38, you can't take his fitness for granted.

Why is it either finding a player that costs a mint, or nothing? If there aren't any available or affordable brilliant midfielders, what's wrong with a good midfielder who'll do a job?

Berbatov although good for parts...
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Harsh. Though I would pay a lot for his left foot.
 
Scholes a short-term fix for a long-term problem, says Phil McNulty for the Bbc, I kind of agree with him, lets face it. We all want United to win PL and/or CL every year, with 2 central midfilders 37, 38 years forget about.
 
England1966 said:
Scholes a short-term fix for a long-term problem, says Phil McNulty for the Bbc, I kind of agree with him, lets face it. We all want United to win PL and/or CL every year, with 2 central midfilders 37, 38 years forget about.
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A long-term problem to be solved by Pogba, Morrison, Tunnicliffe and Cleverley. Not to mention Anderson and Carrick.
 
This day was just about perfect, I'd like to thank Paul Scholes for this late Christmas gift! The best gifts are the one you never expected!
 
Plechazunga said:
He knew Fletch was seriously ill. And Giggs is 38, you can't take his fitness for granted.

Why is it either finding a player that costs a mint, or nothing? If there aren't any available or affordable brilliant midfielders, what's wrong with a good midfielder who'll do a job?



Harsh. Though I would pay a lot for his left foot.
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With Fletch he took a punt. Brock Lesner for example, I believe has something similar to Fletcher, and you can rest all you want, but it seems it's virtually impossible to detect when it's going to flare up. So you train and play and it seemed to most that Fletcher was getting back into form and then it hit big time.

Buying a solid midfielder is a short term gain to a long term problem. There really is no decent midfielder that would overly improve our squad in a reasonable price range. It's either a great midfielder or else we'll end up with him rotting on the bench when a long term replacement is sourced.
 
gooDevil said:
This day was just about perfect, I'd like to thank Paul Scholes for this late Christmas gift! The best gifts are the one you never expected!
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And while we still on praising the likes of Ando despite the fact that he had regressed throughout his time at United rather then improve, we bring people out of retirement in a bid to have some stability in a weak CM. Its a shame that hype does not translate into brilliance because we would have had the new Maradona in CM
 
Amir said:
We're not going to get a new midfielder in January. Having a few more chances to see a legend in action is just fine.

Regarding what has been said here, I think people's memories betray them. In the days of the PLC we had stock owners getting dividends out of our profits, and Fergie regularly had to battle for money for transfers. I don't think our ownership is the real reason we haven't done anything about the midfield. Obviously it would be easier if we had City like money and could just throw it at someone like Sneidjer, but we don't and that's fine. I guess Fergie thinks our midfielders are better than people think they are and has set the bar high in looking for new ones, which means there aren't that many options and ever fewer who are opened for a move. We're probably not looking for potential beause that we have, we want someone a little older who can slot in quickly. Not easy if that's the bar we have set.
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Back in those days we had stock owners getting dividends out of our profits, and Fergie regularly had to battle for money for transfers in a financial stable environment. Now we've got a ruthless family who know nothing about football in command and a club sitting on mountain of debt. We never saw the need of bringing players out of retirement in Edwards. We're doing it now.
 
I think it is a good move, i would not have supported the idea of bring lampard into the team. With scholes you know the quality, he is Manchester United through and through. He looked a bit rusty with his initial touches but got better as the game progressed and kept possession in the midfield and even had a shot from distance on target.
 
As much as i hate to say this, we could have done with Scott Parker. Cheap, at the right age and offers something all our other midfielders don't offer apart from Fletcher who's out.
 
90.2% - Of players to attempt over 1000 passes in the Premier League last season, Paul Scholes had the highest success rate (90.2%). Return.



Not much will have changed in a year, it will be great to have him as a super sub.
 
Will be a great option to have when we need to see out games or when we need to break teams down at home.

Its great to have him rather than a panic buy in jan.
 
I feel like writing a 5000 word rawkesque novel on how this move is genius by Fergie and will result in us winning a octreble but instead I will leave you with just two words........
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cj4_elmo said:
As much as i hate to say this, we could have done with Scott Parker. Cheap, at the right age and offers something all our other midfielders don't offer apart from Fletcher who's out.
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Nothing wrong about admitting that Scott Parker would have improved our squad. It was obvious imo he would have considering the lack of quality in CM.

The fact we're bringing Scholes out of retirement to patch up the CM says it all. Its a bit worrying mind that its happened in January. That suggests to me that the Glazers aren't offering up any money to buy anyone.

I could understand doing this in December or in February. But the Transfer window is open ffs!
 
RedSky At Night said:
Nothing wrong about admitting that Scott Parker would have improved our squad. It was obvious imo he would have considering the lack of quality in CM.

The fact we're bringing Scholes out of retirement to patch up the CM says it all. Its a bit worrying mind that its happened in January. That suggests to me that the Glazers aren't offering up any money to buy anyone.

I could understand doing this in December or in February. But the Transfer window is open ffs!
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Or it could just mean that a player SAF really wants is not available till the summer , I dont see a problem with a fit Scholes stepping in till then.
 
If Scholes has been training well then even at his age, this extended break could actually have done him a world of good. I wouldn't judge his first performance in 8 months. In fact, I doubt he would have got a run out if we weren't 3-1 up.

Let's see how he gets on with 2 or 3 45mins under his belt.
 
Reapersoul20 said:
A long-term problem to be solved by Pogba, Morrison, Tunnicliffe and Cleverley. Not to mention Anderson and Carrick.
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That would be lovely. But realistically, not all of these youngsters are going to be as good as we want them to be. Three of them aren't even close to having any real impact on the first team. Could be a while yet before we even know if they can make the progress and become good enough.
 
devilish said:
Back in those days we had stock owners getting dividends out of our profits, and Fergie regularly had to battle for money for transfers in a financial stable environment. Now we've got a ruthless family who know nothing about football in command and a club sitting on mountain of debt. We never saw the need of bringing players out of retirement in Edwards. We're doing it now.
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If we had bought Wesley Sneijder, Luke Modric, Xavi, Fabregas, Xabi Alonso and fecking Maradona, Scholes could still have gone to Sir Alex and tell him he wants to return. And we'd still accomodate him. I really don't think it was done out of 'our needs'. Scholes wanted back.

We don't know what's going on behind close doors, but money was spent in the summer. You can call them ruthless and everything else you did, but they did do well in terms of better maximizing our potential revenue and the debt has become smaller. There's debt, and yet we're also making more money (yeah, I know, partially from ticket and season ticket prices, that's the bad part).
 
Amir said:
If we had bought Wesley Sneijder, Luke Modric, Xavi, Fabregas, Xabi Alonso and fecking Maradona, Scholes could still have gone to Sir Alex and tell him he wants to return. And we'd still accomodate him. I really don't think it was done out of 'our needs'. Scholes wanted back.
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As you say, we cant know. But I disagree with this. I believe Scholes is back to help us out.
 
Simon Adebesi said:
As you say, we cant know. But I disagree with this. I believe Scholes is back to help us out.
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A little from pile A and a little from pile B.

In a parralell universe where the following happened...

-Cleverley and Anderson kicked on from our opening few games and gone from strength to strength as a midfield partnership
-Fletcher's UC remained in remission
-Vidic never knacked his knee and Rafael has made more than 1 PL appearance by now, meaning we didn't constantly need Phil Jones in our back four

...I reckon Fergie would tell Scholes he's probably better off staying retired, give him a biscuit, pat him on the head and send him back out to keep an eye on the reserves.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
A little from pile A and a little from pile B.

In a parralell universe where the following happened...

-Cleverley and Anderson kicked on from our opening few games and gone from strength to strength as a midfield partnership
-Fletcher's UC remained in remission
-Vidic never knacked his knee and Rafael has made more than 1 PL appearance by now, meaning we didn't constantly need Phil Jones in our back four

...I reckon Fergie would tell Scholes he's probably better off staying retired, give him a biscuit, pat him on the head and send him back out to keep an eye on the reserves.
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I can't agree with that. We were prepared to offer him a contract for this season anyway.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
A little from pile A and a little from pile B.

In a parralell universe where the following happened...

-Cleverley and Anderson kicked on from our opening few games and gone from strength to strength as a midfield partnership
-Fletcher's UC remained in remission
-Vidic never knacked his knee and Rafael has made more than 1 PL appearance by now, meaning we didn't constantly need Phil Jones in our back four

...I reckon Fergie would tell Scholes he's probably better off staying retired, give him a biscuit, pat him on the head and send him back out to keep an eye on the reserves.
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You still assume Scholes did the asking. Or that, if he asked, he did so because he wasnt enjoying life away from the football.

I assume SAF asked him to come back to help out. Or, if Scholes asked, it was because he was getting carpet burns on his knees from hiding behind the sofa while watching the horror show that is our midfield.
 
Simon Adebesi said:
You still assume Scholes did the asking. Or that, if he asked, he did so because he wasnt enjoying life away from the football.

I assume SAF asked him to come back to help out. Or, if Scholes asked, it was because he was getting carpet burns on his knees from hiding behind the sofa while watching the horror show that is our midfield.
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I do.

You assume the opposite.

My assumption is based on what Fergie said happened.

What's yours based on?
 
I believe Scholes asked back in, saying he missed it.

Scholes said: "I've been pretty clear since I stopped playing that I miss it. I'm delighted the manager feels I can still make a contribution to the team and I'm looking forward to playing my part in trying to bring more success to this great club."

Speaking on ITV, Ferguson said: "He came to see me and said he wanted to come back, he was missing it too much. There were no negatives as far as I'm concerned. The players were fantastic about it, the fans I'm sure will be happy and I'm happy."
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acnumber9 said:
I can't agree with that. We were prepared to offer him a contract for this season anyway.
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This is true. At least that's what Fergie said at the back end of last season.

I still think if all the above happened we wouldn't be able to offer Scholes much football, so Fergie might have discouraged him.

Feck knows, though. None of the above happened, so I'm sure Fergie bit his hand off when he mentioned he'd changed his mind.
 
After having 24 hours to digest it I'm still not really thrilled that we're in a situation where a 37 year old is coming out of retirement to fill a gap in the squad.

That said, with Vidic out I'm sure Scholes experience will help not only on the pitch but in the dressing room and if we are in that situation no one better to be able to call on than Scholes. Even yesterday I think his experience helped us and enabled us to keep the ball the way we did for the past 25 mins in a way that no one else in the squad could.

From his perspective I'd say the reality of retiring and never playing again encouraged him to take the opportunity to play again for as long as he can, and fair play to him he has nothing to prove but a fair bit to lose.

Overall I hope that his return is a stop gap and that we maybe have our eyes on someone for next summer. I hope we dont end up in a situation where we hear that he was brought back purely to cover injuries and now that everyones back we're happy with the squad again.

I dont think there's any Utd fan that could be unhappy at seeing Scholes pull a shirt on again however the circumstances under which it happened are far from ideal and do raise a couple of concerns for me.
 
Amir said:
If we had bought Wesley Sneijder, Luke Modric, Xavi, Fabregas, Xabi Alonso and fecking Maradona, Scholes could still have gone to Sir Alex and tell him he wants to return. And we'd still accomodate him. I really don't think it was done out of 'our needs'. Scholes wanted back.

We don't know what's going on behind close doors, but money was spent in the summer. You can call them ruthless and everything else you did, but they did do well in terms of better maximizing our potential revenue and the debt has become smaller. There's debt, and yet we're also making more money (yeah, I know, partially from ticket and season ticket prices, that's the bad part).
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I doubt that to be honest. I think Scholes had returned because we've got a big problem in CM due to lack of quality/too many injuries. You dont expect SAF coming out and say 'I brought Scholes back from retirement because I have no money to spend' wouldn't you?
 
He used to be 22 when he 1st got into the side for a couple of years

Randall Flagg said:
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Solius said:
Seeing him in the number 22 was weird.
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marchi-91 said:
Probably more development time for specific players. If you can hold out for the player to progress, why dump massive amounts on unproven talent. Fergie is not going to dump 10's of millions on a player like Nasri or Carrol who was good for half a season. We want players that will perform year in year out. We won't sign somebody like Lampard who'll go straight to the bench when a new player arrives and then barely get used. That's just pissing money down the drain. Berbatov although good for parts, is probably the reason for this. 30 million and he's benched by a home grown player and a 9 million pound wonder kid.

Scholes fills the gap nicely of an experienced player who plugs a hole that wasn't exactly necessary at the start of the season, but is now. Fergie was right in going into the season with Anderson, Cleverly, Fletcher, Giggs and Carrick. That's 5 good central midfielders. But injuries have played havoc and we struggled.
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I don't doubt that the long-term plan is that Pogba and/or Morrison breaks through, but given how little they've played this season (although Morrison has been injured, so you never know if he'd have played more) I think it's fairly safe to assume that neither of them will play a large part of the team next year. Remember that Fergie chose to play Rafael in the middle instead of Pogba! That basically tells me that we were looking at playing at least two seasons (this and the next) with an understrength midfield, because we've got young players coming through our ranks.

Now, let me be clear about this; there's very little about football I find better than seeing a player come through from the club's own academy. Following a player through the reserves and see him take on the big stage is fecking amazing, to say the least. But I still don't think playing with an understrength midfield for two seasons, because you're waiting for said youngsters to grow, is the right thing to do - nor do I think Fergie is happy with the situation, regardless of the talent he's got coming through.

Of the 5 players you mentioned Anderson is very hit and miss. I've been a big fan of him since he got there, but even I have to admit that he hasn't really set the world alight. Anderson also has some injury problems and seems to suffer from relatively long spells where he's simply off form. Giggs turned 38 during fall and although he's still very good he'll need a lot of resting in between games in order to get fit. Fletcher was a big gamble (will elaborate on that below). So we basically started the season with Carrick and Cleverley as the only midfielders we could expect to play week in week out, as I see it. Could possibly add Jones to that list if you really want to, as he's played quite well in the middle of the pitch when asked to. Either way, I don't think that's enough.

marchi-91 said:
With Fletch he took a punt. Brock Lesner for example, I believe has something similar to Fletcher, and you can rest all you want, but it seems it's virtually impossible to detect when it's going to flare up. So you train and play and it seemed to most that Fletcher was getting back into form and then it hit big time.

Buying a solid midfielder is a short term gain to a long term problem. There really is no decent midfielder that would overly improve our squad in a reasonable price range. It's either a great midfielder or else we'll end up with him rotting on the bench when a long term replacement is sourced.
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It did? Fletcher missed the entire pre-season because of his condition. His first game was Benfica away in the CL. After that he did play some games, but going into the season with Fletcher's condition was still a huge gamble, and a gamble that I don't think a club like United should have to make.

I think you're spot on, that there's no midfielder in a reasonable price range that'd significantly improve our midfield, but that's just the problem for me. A club like United shouldn't have to look for a reasonable priced midfielder.
 
devilish said:
I doubt that to be honest. I think Scholes had returned because we've got a big problem in CM due to lack of quality/too many injuries. You dont expect SAF coming out and say 'I brought Scholes back from retirement because I have no money to spend' wouldn't you?
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Nope, I would certainly not expect Sir Alex to say so. Nor would I expect him to ask Scholes to return after failing to covince him to stay at the end of last season.

Regarding money, we spent a fair bit since signing our last midfielders in 2007. Some went for mid to more expensive signings - the likes of Berbatov, Valencia, Young, De Gea, Jones. Others were smaller deals in hope they'd come could (some did, others didn't). For whatever reason, none of them was a midfielder player, Fergie elected to sign centerhalves, wingers, strikers, goalkeepers, but not midfielders. That's his choice.
 
Hitchcocker said:
Would like to hear what Keane thinks about Scholes coming back out of retirement.
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"I'm very surprised I have to say. I can understand that it's probably worth a gamble. But Scholesy retired seven or eight months ago because he thought his legs were gone and wasn't contributing in big games so in that respect I'm surprised. But it's probably worth the gamble to lift the squad."
 
Pexbo said:
If Scholes has been training well then even at his age, this extended break could actually have done him a world of good. I wouldn't judge his first performance in 8 months. In fact, I doubt he would have got a run out if we weren't 3-1 up.

Let's see how he gets on with 2 or 3 45mins under his belt.
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Spot on Pexbo. We all know he has the quality, let the guy get a bit of sharpness back first and then see whether he still has what it takes.

I don't know why Fergie is being criticised here. Taking Scholes back on is a no brainer for me, we all know it is very unlikely we are going to sign any midfieler of note in Jan. So what is wrong with giving Scholes a bit part role, should we be struggling?

FFS it is not as if he has been retired for 2 seasons. If it doesn't work out, what have we lost? Especially considering we are probably not going to sign anyone else till the summer anyway.
 
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