Paul Scholes: clandestine Liverpool fan

The Ginger Prince appears obsessed with the Reds these days, sounding off on our players whenever he can.  I would say he's a wind-up muppet, but he's not, most of the time he actually talks sense.

He most recently chimed in on the Luis Suarez transfer saga, questioning whether 'El Conejo Loco' and Messi will be able to play together. “If Luis Suarez does sign for Barcelona from Liverpool, will Lionel Messi ‘accept’ him? Suarez is a centre forward and he won’t want to play out wide. I can’t see Suarez and Messi linking well together,” Scholes wrote on his Paddy Power blog.

He's not afraid to criticize his former club either.  On the Shaw transfer, he wrote, 'For a left-back to be worth £34m shows how silly the game has gone. For that money I want a centre-forward who’s going to score 30 goals a season.'  Preaching to the choir, my frienemy.

Before the World Cup, he praised 'the Liverpool way' of playing football and challenged the English to emulate it in Brazil.  On the subject he wrote, 'It would be refreshing for England to adopt Liverpool’s attacking mentality in Brazil. Really go for it. That means certainly four, and possibly five, Liverpool players in the England starting XI against Italy on June 14' and 'I’d love to see Roy be brave enough to play like Liverpool (or Man United teams of the past).'  Glad to see he realizes the glory years of his former club are in the past.

When it comes to Gerrard, he's had nothing but love, stating in the same post, 'Gerrard (a good leader who will have quickly moved on from that slip) has adjusted his game superbly, very much like I did' and 'That’s the big difference between Steven (Gerrard) and Lampard, for example. I’m not sure Lampard has the ability to control a game. He’s always someone who’s up trying to score goals.'  You know now he's expecting a nice Christmas present for the Gerrard household.

The best part is he gets a joke in here and there, for instance, 'Defensively Liverpool were poor – conceding 50 goals – but they can be contenders again next year IF they can get two world-class centre halves and a left-back. I’m talking about players of the standard of Jaap Stam and Rio Ferdinand.' Rio Ferdinand, world class!?!? Oh the wit.

It's too bad Scholesy wasted his career on the dark side.  He should have went to Italy or Spain, where he's actually more appreciated and wouldn't have played in the shadows of bigger personalities.  No matter what, I've never desired him to play for Liverpool and he has never been better than Gerrard.