Scholes is irreplaceable, by Kevin Ashford (Guest feature)

Quite simply the answer to the above question is that you cannot replace a player like Paul Scholes because he was a one off. Just like past legends that have graced the hallow turf at the thearte of dreams, Eric Cantona, Roy Keane & recently departed Cristiano Ronaldo have never been replaced because they were all excepional talents who will forever be remembered in Man Utds famous history, and Scholes now joins that list.
Scholes played an incredible 676 games for Man Utd scoring 150 goals, many of the goals he scored were special and will be replayed for years to come. When asked the question who was the best midfieled you played against, Xavi, Zidane and Thierry Henry all answer with the name "Paul Scholes", which just goes to show how much of a rare and exceptional talent he was. So how do we go about filling the gap left by a recently retired Man Utd legend ?

Modric, Nasri & Sneijder have been the the talk of the gossip colums this summer in the tabloids and you can see why. All three of them names mentioned are attacking flair players who would improve any team in world football, but Sir Alex Ferguson is keeping his cards close to his chest and has recently distanced himself from signing Nasri or Sneijder.
On being asked about Nasri, Sir Alex replied "I don't think he's coming to United. That's all I can tell you. I think he's agreed to go somewhere else" . And when asked about Sneijder his response was “I keep reading about this, there’s absolutely nothing at all to that, First of all I don’t think Inter are prepared to sell him anyway. You get conjecture and you get speculation every week in newspapers unfortunately.”
 Personally i think Modric was Sir Alex's first choice to fill the midfield gap left by Scholes, but Modric was quick to say that he favoured a transfer to Chelsea and that he would like to stay in London. That then left him to look at the possibility of signing Nasri who had an outstanding season for Arsenal last year and has only one year remaining on his contract at 24 years of age. But his comments last week seemed to suggest that he has already agreed to go somewhere else, so you would not bet against him joining our noisy neighbours on the blue side of Manchester !

So that leaves us looking at the possibilty of signing Wesley Sneijder from Inter Milan, Sir Alex's third choice transfer target in my opinion.
There is no doubting that Sneijder is a world class talent, and many pundits have made comparrisons between him and Scholes and its easy to see why. Both players are comfaitable on the ball, can dictate the pace of a game and can score goals. The injection of pace that Sneijder would give us in midfield would be a breath of fresh air. We thought we had all these attributes in Anderson but after a great start to his career at Old Trafford in which i thought he over achieved, he has stuggled to hold down a first team place.
I believe that Man Utd will sign Sneijder before the Community shield game early next month, and that Sir Alex's comments were intended to deflect publicity regarding the transfer which has worked because since making the comments the rumours have died down, but will still not go away.

Sneijder signing for Man Utd will give us all a lift at Old Trafford, we admire and love to watch creative footballers and have been spoilt over the years with the talent we have had at our disposal. If Sneijder does sign and pulls on the famous red shirt he will be in my opinion Fergie's third choice central midfield summer target behind Modric and Nasri, but i am not going to complain with that !

I just hope that we do not have to change our style of play to accomidate Sneijder at Man Utd, if he fits straight in and performs like we all know he is capable of it will not just be the supporters who are delighted with our new signing, but Rooney and Hernandez will be too !


But nobody can ever be compared with Paul Scholes