Ferguson, Alex - Alex Ferguson My Autobiography

‘He’s good, but I don’t think he has any chance of making it. Too small,’ said Jim Ryan, who was watching with me. It became a stock phrase at the club. Scholesy: too small.

As his time with us rolled on, Paul Scholes encountered problems with his asthma. He didn’t play in the youth team the year they won the FA Youth Cup. Beckham joined the team only in the later rounds because he had grown gangly and weak. Simon Davies, who played for Wales, was the captain. Robbie Savage was also in the side. The majority of them went on to be internationals. Another, Ben Thornley, would have earned a cap, but for major knee trouble.

As a young forward, in the hole, Scholes would be guaranteed 15 goals a season. When he developed into a central midfield player, he had the brain for the passing game and a talent for orchestration. He must have been a natural. I loved watching teams trying to mark him out of the game. He would take them into positions they didn’t want to go to, and with a single touch would turn the ball round the corner, or feint away and hit the reverse pass. Opponents would spend a minute tracking him and then be made to appear inconsequential and sometimes even foolish. They would end up galloping back to their own box. He would destroy a marker that way.

Paul endured several disappointments with long-term injuries but would always come back better. He was a superior player after his eye problem and after his knee injury. He would return re-energised.

In his early thirties, he was prone to occasional bouts of frustration as the competition for midfield places intensified. I had Darren Fletcher and Michael Carrick to consider in the two central positions. I confess, I made an error here. Taking people for granted is not a mistake you are necessarily aware of at the time, and it is hard to correct until you are confronted by the effect on the victim. My attitude was that in times of need I could always go back to Scholesy. He was a loyal servant, always ready and willing to step in. Carrick and Fletcher would be my new first-choice pairing and Scholes would be the ageing support. It was in my mind for too long that Paul was coming to the end of his career.

In the 2009 Champions League final in Rome, which we lost to Barcelona, I sent Paul on in the second half. Anderson had made only three passes in the first half. Scholes made 25 in the last 20 minutes of the game. You think you know everything in this game. You don’t. Taking people for granted and thinking you can always go back to them as they approach the end is wrong. You forget how good they are.

At the end, consequently, I used him a lot more and rested him at the right times. People would ask me to pick my best Man United team. I would find it incredibly difficult. You couldn’t leave out Scholes and you couldn’t leave out Bryan Robson. They would both give you at least ten goals a season. But then that raises the question: how can you leave out Keane? You would have to play the three of them. But if you do that, who do you play with Cantona, who was always better playing with another forward? Try picking one striker from McClair, Hughes, Solskjaer, Van Nistelrooy, Sheringham, Yorke, Cole, Rooney and Van Persie. You couldn’t disregard Giggs. So it always felt like an impossible task to select a best XI, yet you would have to say Cantona, Giggs, Scholes, Robson and Cristiano Ronaldo could never be left out of a Man United side.

Scholes was probably the best English midfielder since Bobby Charlton. Since I have been in England, Paul Gascoigne was the best of those who could lift you from your seat. In his last few years, Paul Scholes elevated himself above Gascoigne. One, for longevity, and two, for improving himself in his thirties.

He was such a brilliant long passer that he could choose a hair on the head of any team-mate answering the call of nature at our training ground. Gary Neville once thought he had found refuge in a bush, but Scholesy found him from 40 yards. He inflicted a similar long-range missile strike, once, on Peter Schmeichel, and was chased round the training ground for his impertinence. Scholesy would have made a first-class sniper.

As a player myself, I never possessed the innate ability of a Cantona or a Paul Scholes: eyes in the back of the head. But I could see it in others because I watched so many games. I knew how important those players were to a team.

Scholes, Cantona, Verón. Beckham had good vision too. He was not the sort who could thread great passes through, but he could see the other side of the pitch all right. Laurent Blanc had good vision. Teddy Sheringham and Dwight Yorke could see what was happening all around them. But of the players in the top echelon, Scholes was the best of that type. When we were winning easily, Scholes would sometimes try something daft, and I would say, ‘Look, he’s getting bored now.’

Ryan Giggs was the biggest noise from that generation. He was the one most likely to be identified as a wonder boy. Awarding him a first-team debut at 16 landed us with a problem we had not expected: the Giggs phenomenon.

An Italian agent phoned me when Ryan was a kid and asked, ‘What do your sons do?’ I said: ‘Mark’s doing a degree, Jason’s going into television, Darren is an apprentice here.’ He said: ‘Sell me Giggs and I can make them rich.’ Naturally I declined the offer.

The George Best comparison stuck to him immediately and was impossible to dislodge. Everyone wanted a piece of him. But Giggs was smart. ‘See the manager,’ he would say to anyone seeking an interview or a tie-up. He didn’t want to grant interviews and found a way to transfer the blame for the refusal on to me. He was clever.

Bryan Robson approached Ryan one day to recommend Harry Swales as an agent. He had checked it with me first. Bryan was coming to the end and was sure Harry was the right man for Giggs. He was right. Harry is fantastic. Got engaged at 81 to a Swiss lady he met on the platform of a railway station. She was lost. He is a former sergeant-major with a handlebar moustache. He looked after Ryan really well. Ryan has a strong mother, too, and his grandparents were very, very good people.

To stretch his first-team career to two decades, Ryan had to develop a meticulous fitness programme. Yoga, and his preparation routines, were at the root of his longevity. Ryan was religious about yoga. Twice a week after training, an expert would come in to guide him through the exercises. That became vital to him. In the days when he was susceptible to hamstring injuries, we were never sure how much we could play him. His hamstrings were a constant concern. We would leave him out of games to have him ready for others. By the end, only his age would prompt us to give him a rest. He would play 35 games a season because his fitness was fantastic.

Ryan’s intelligence helped him make the sacrifices in his social life. He is a reserved kind of guy but, of all that bunch, he was the one they looked up to. He was the king, the man. There was a brief period when he and Paul Ince would wear daft suits but it soon passed. Ryan still has the suit that caused me to blurt, ‘What the hell is that?’

Incey was a fan of flash dressing and he and Giggs were good pals. They were a duo. But Ryan has led a highly professional life. He is revered around the club, where everyone defers and looks up to him.

When his pace deteriorated we played him more in the centre of the park. We no longer expected him to flash round the outside of defenders the way he did as a boy. Not many people noticed that even in his later incarnation he retained his change of pace, which is sometimes more important than raw speed. His balance, too, was unaffected.

In the autumn of 2010 he was brought down by West Ham’s Jonathan Spector in the penalty box, and I seized my chance to set a quiz question. How many penalties had Ryan Giggs won in his Manchester United career? Answer: five. Because he always stays on his feet. He stumbles but never goes down. I would ask him, after a heavy foul in the box, why he had declined to go down, which he would have been entitled to do, and he would look at me as if I had horns. He would wear that vacant look. ‘I don’t go down,’ he would say.