Harrison tips Scholes to play on

Former Manchester United youth coach Eric Harrison believes Paul Scholes is ready to prolong his career by playing on next season.

In January, Scholes came out of the wilderness of retirement just five months after calling time on his playing career, by agreeing to help out his manager until the end of the current campaign.

The Red Devils boss is still a fan of his playmaker and sees him carrying on next season, but Scholes himself has not commented on his future plans.

Harrison, who was in charge of the youth set-up when Ryan Giggs and David Beckham came through, said: “I talk to Paul reasonably often and I said to him when he started again: ‘Paul, you can play another season’.”

“He said: ‘Do you think so?’ (and) I said: ‘Yeah, I’m absolutely certain’. Because there’s an old saying in football: ‘You can’t move as fast as the ball’, and he makes the ball do the work.”

“What happens with Paul, I think he likes somebody to tell him – not how good he is because he’s been told that a million times – but for somebody to tell him he can go on longer.”

“He still runs the game. When he came on against Manchester City (in his first game back in January) he completely ran the game. There were some great players against him, don’t get me wrong (and) they could not get near him.”

“When Xavi and (Andres) Iniesta say he is as good as any midfield player in the world that is a compliment because they’re not bad either.”

“He has certainly changed his game but I think it’s for the benefit of Manchester United because we certainly still need somebody who can control the ball.”

United manager Sir Alex Ferguson added: “It’s not something I’ve discussed with him but on the evidence of what we’ve seen I don’t see why he shouldn’t (play for another season).”

“When I said to him last year: ‘You’ll give me 25 to 30 games’, that wasn’t enough for him in his opinion. But I think he may look at it differently now.”