A celebration of Paul Scholes’ goal against Barcelona, his greatest ever

Fourteen years have passed since Paul Scholes scored an Earth-shattering long-range goal for Manchester United against Barcelona. For reasons of context and timing, it should be remembered as his greatest ever.

Cast your mind back to the middle of the 2005-06 season.

Manchester United captain Roy Keane has left the club after ruthlessly criticising his team-mates in a never-broadcast interview.

With Keane now at Celtic, Alex Ferguson picks an assortment of untested central midfield combinations, highlighting a worrying lack of squad depth.

Rookie Darren Fletcher, converted striker Alan Smith, utility player John O’Shea and winger Ryan Giggs all make a surprising number of appearances in the middle of the park.

United’s most talented player in that position, Paul Scholes, is ruled out for the season in late January with a diagnosis of double vision. He is, at this point, 31 years old.

It’s hard to pin down an exact moment, but somewhere around this time, somewhere around getting into his 30s, missing games and seeing — albeit blurrily — John O’Shea taking his central midfield berth, Paul Scholes stops being a goalscoring midfielder.

There seem to be a few reasons why this happens: declining pace, the loss of reliable defensive cover provided by Keane, changing tactics. Whatever the causes, these changes produce a slow transformation.

Scholes the box-to-box midfielder is, with his feet up for the remainder of the season, becoming Scholes the deep-lying playmaker.

He scored goals, my lord, he scored goals. But he will now score far fewer.

With his vision restored, 2006-07 marks something of an encore for goalscoring Scholes. Although a return of seven goals in 45 appearances is modest, one of those happens to be a