There are two possible responses to learning of Scholes’s anxiety. The first is to applaud his humility. The other is to conclude that he should be treated for modesty neurosis. It is true that he hasn’t scored in his country’s colours for more than two years while remaining prolific for Manchester United, and that is a worrying discrepancy. But the thought that a midfielder of such class, a footballer’s footballer, would be dropped from the national squad is hard to accommodate. One head we can assume it has not entered is that of Sven-Göran Eriksson.