Early Doors - Your morning briefing blog

All hail the Ginger Prince

Thu Apr 23 08:54AM

Paul Scholes played his 600th game for Manchester United last night. Yet all Early Doors can do is wonder why he is nearly 200 behind Ryan Giggs, who has chugged on to 799.

ED isn't very keen on these numerical milestones. They give a vague satisfaction akin to watching your car's mile counter click over, but they don't actually mean anything.

And if we operated in, say, base seven instead of base 10, Scholes would be on 1,515 appearances and last night's run-out would have been entirely irrelevant.

Whatever ED's landmark-related gripes, there is no doubt that United's older players have contributed enormously to the club, which has rightly treated them well in return.

Nobody would argue that Scholes, Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs are automatic first-team selections or that they are the players they were at their peak. Yet their value remains.

Anderson had a superb game against Portsmouth last night. It is impossible to quantify how much he benefits from Scholes's example - both his attitude and the extraordinary natural ability that allows him to ping 80 yard balls at team-mates taking a leak by the side of the pitch in training and whack them on the back of the head.

Compare that to Arsenal, where players over 30 are treated as damaged goods and begrudgingly offered a one-year contract and a Zimmer frame. Even if they are Dennis Bergkamp.

Watching Denilson get outmuscled against Chelsea and Liverpool, it was impossible not to wonder how much more savvy and steely the Brazilian might be had Patrick Vieira tutored him through the early years of his career.

Admittedly, Vieira couldn't make him grow six inches or put on two stones of muscle, but you get the idea.

Despite his penchant for abysmally-timed, leg-breaking tackles, there is nobody more respected by his fellow professionals than Scholes, yet he retains his complete antipathy towards and the perks of being a superstar footballer. Like money.

In 2005 when Rio Ferdinand (recently returned from an eight-month ban for missing a drug test) was haggling over the details of his bumper £100,000-a-week* contract, United quietly got Scholes in and the midfielder duly signed the first piece of paper that was put in front of him.

The problem was, Scholes's deal was worth only £70,000-a-week*. Not a bad wage, admittedly, but over £1 million less than Ferdinand took home every year, and all because Rio is a greedy beggar with a ball-breaking agent.

If it were up to Early Doors, and this statement alone probably proves why it is not, Scholes would always be the highest player at his club.

What better way to reward loyalty than to take the man with no agent, no PR machine and no interest in negotiation and give him £200,000 every week?

Want to get top dollar, Rio? Sack your agent, stop funding violent gangster movies while simultaneously campaigning against knife crime, shut down your preposterous lifestyle magazine and get your bloody head down.

*These figures have been plucked out of a tabloid newspaper at best, or thin air at worst.

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Actually, ED doesn't really have a problem with footballers pursuing outside interests. They only work two or three hours a day, so life can get pretty boring unless you have an extra-curricular schedule packed full of self-promoting guff.

The excellent 1963 documentary Six Days To Saturday followed a week in the lives of the Swindon Town squad, and revealed that Mike Summerbee spent his afternoons at the local sweet shop chatting awkwardly with the proprietor. Ernie Hunt, of later 'donkey kick' fame, went down the bookies.

Incidentally the film, which ED urges you to watch, was made by John Boorman who went on to direct cinematic gems such as hick-strewn rapefest Deliverance. The two aren't much alike.

The point is that footballers have always had a lot of time on their hands, and ED certainly doesn't want them to live like monks - it was the monastic combination of sitting around a well-appointed old building, brewing your own beer and contemplating the nature of existence that formed the basis of many clubs' drinking culture in the 1980s.

- - -

Roy Keane is back in football. Just four months after quitting a struggling Premier League club, he has taken over a struggling Championship club and he claims he couldn't be happier.

ED was tickled by the picture of Keane that accompanies the announcement on Ipswich's official site. Their new manager appears wild-eyed, heavily bearded and one misplaced backpass away from going on a killing spree.

If it were any other manager, they would make him have a shave and a haircut before making him pose for a proper photo, but nobody dares mess with Keane.

He is a bit like football's answer to Osama Bin Laden. He is rarely sighted in public (even the dog-walking seems to have died a death if not, hopefully, the dog), most pictures of him are clearly out of date; you might even start to wonder whether he is really alive.

No doubt Keane will reveal himself at some tetchy press conference. He does not seem the ideal match for Ipswich, who are well-liked and generally seen as a 'nice' club.

There is more chance of Keane duetting with Susan Boyle in the Britain's Got Talent final than there is of him using the pleasantly self-deprecating 'Tractor Boys' nickname.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: Newcastle assistant manager Iain Dowie defends Michael Owen against accusations that he is rubbish: "It's almost a British thing now, we like to knock our great goalscorers." Yes, that's right. Bobby Charlton, Gary Lineker, Ian Rush, Denis Law... we love to knock them. Obviously the criticism of Owen has nothing to do with his passable impression of a concrete bollard against Spurs on Sunday.

FOREIGN VIEW: Real Madrid defender Pepe comes over all remorseful after kicking seven shades of snot out of Getafe's Javier Casquero on Tuesday night in a bizarre on-field attack: "These are the worst days of my life. I do not have any desire to return to playing football."

COMING UP: There is more continental action tonight with Racing Santander v Atletico Madrid in La Liga and the Coppa Italia semi-final Internazionale v Sampdoria. Plus continued coverage of the World Championship snooker from the Crucible.

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