Paul Scholes has revealed all about a row with Sir Alex Ferguson which left him thinking his time at the club may be over.
Speaking to former Manchester United team-mate Gary Neville on The overlapScholes got embroiled in a fight between himself and the club’s legendary manager.
The incident happened when United were unlucky enough to play Liverpool in the Premier League on a Sunday ahead of a League Cup clash on Monday.
The Red Devils lost 3-1 to their rivals thanks to a brace from Michael Owen and Scholes only played the last 13 minutes before a draw with Arsenal the next day.
While United’s reserves are expected to be lined up for the second encounter, Scholes remained livid when he was not named in the starting line-up for the opener of the double-header.
“I did some bullshit when I was a kid, he let me go out on Sundays and I was p***** off,” Scholes explained.
“Sometimes when I was left out most of the time I knew why, I hadn’t played well the week before so I could handle it, I was fine, you see some players, they can’t do everything just can’t stand it if they played badly or not.
“I don’t remember what the game was like before, but I was really p***** apart from the fact that he didn’t choose me in this game and we were beaten, we weren’t playing very well.
“I think at half-time ‘he’s going to bring me in’ and he didn’t.
“I was back from the start of the game, I had lost my mind and I was thinking ‘he’s going to bring me’ and I don’t know if I was imagining it but I felt like he was doing it on purpose. , “I’m not bringing him in because I’m going to play him tomorrow”, at the time it was like a League Cup match, you play the reserves, you play the youngsters.
“My head was gone and I thought he was doing it on purpose, he wasn’t bringing me in, he just left it and left it and left it and thought there was 10 minutes left and I could play and go from there. before and play tomorrow.”
Whether or not it was Ferguson’s famous mind games, Scholes took matters into his own hands instead.
The former midfielder thought it would be him who would decide whether or not to play against Arsenal, and went to tell his manager.
“I came home and I was still furious,” Scholes recalled. “We were meeting that evening in Stockport at the train station and told him I wasn’t going.
“I pulled up next to him in the parking lot, the gaffer was there in his big Mercedes, I kissed the window and said I wasn’t going.
“It was crazy, stupid, but I had lost my mind and after that game it was an international break, so it just went on and on.
“There was no contact because I was with England so I had to wait 10 days, I don’t think he went crazy, he just fined me two weeks of salary, I apologized.
“I didn’t think I would survive after that to be honest with you, I thought I would be gone.”