Paul Scholes admits he hated the flak he got for telling the truth on TV as Gary Neville says his ex-Man United team-mate belongs on the pitch

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Nearly every day for 16 years, Paul Scholes and Gary Neville sat next to each other in the Manchester United dressing room. Their personalities are a study in opposites. Scholes is dry and laconic and shy. Neville is driven and earnest and fiercely articulate. It is one of the reasons they are such good friends. It is also one of the reasons their after-lives are so different.

Neville is happy in his post-football existence. He is busy. He is fulfilled. He is happier than he has ever been. He still wakes up eager to face the challenges ahead. This is a man whose motto is 'attack the day' and his assault on it and all its seconds, minutes and hours is relentless.

Scholes is happy, too, but he is drifting. He knows there is something missing. The summers are OK because there is golf to play. Winter, when the weather on the moors above Manchester closes in, is more difficult. 'I need to start doing something every day,' he says. 'Sometimes you end up sat at home, wondering what you're going to do, hoping for the right thing to come along.'

Paul Scholes (right) has not taken to punditry like fellow Manchester United great Gary Neville

Last summer, Scholes says, he applied for the job of coaching United's Under 23 team. United went for Ricky Sbragia instead. 'I don't think the club were particularly interested,' says Scholes, as he sits in the bar at the Peninsula Stadium, the home of Salford City, who he co-owns with Neville and the rest of the Class of 92.

'Maybe it was because I hadn't been too complimentary about a couple of their performances while I've been working as a television pundit. It wasn't that I didn't want to be complimentary. I was just giving my honest views whenever I saw them. It's different now but the way they were before Mourinho arrived, not really competing, it was difficult to dodge around it.

'They employed me for 20 years and I had the best time of my life there and I don't want to be slagging them off all the time but when you see what happened and the way they played sometimes, it was very difficult to defend. The only club I want to be at is Man United and I thought I had a good chance of doing the Under 23s. That coaching role was something I really wanted to do but it didn't happen.

'I've tried everything else. I've done a bit of TV work and it doesn't really satisfy me. I never thought it would. It was never something I wanted to do. It's still not something I'm really comfortable doing but I watch every game on TV every night of the week anyway. Football is something I love.

'I remember the very first television thing I did was something Gary asked me to do on Sky. I said a few things about Jack Wilshere that he wasn't happy with and that was all over the papers and Jack was wanting to ring me and speak to me and I had never really thought about that side of it until that happened and that's why I don't like it.

'When I first started being a pundit I just said everything that I felt was true and people said that after 20 years of saying nothing I'd turned into a walking back page. That's what I hated. I completely hated it. It's calmed down a lot with people like Rio and Steven Gerrard coming to BT. I do 15 shows a season now and I suppose I've been a little bit more careful with what I'm saying. Which is not right really. I shouldn't be like that. I should be honest. Whether it creates headlines or not should not be my concern really.'

Scholes told Sportsmail that he hates the flak he receives for giving his honest opinions

Scholes shrugs his trademark shrug. He applied for the manager's job at Oldham Athletic a couple of months ago but Oldham went with caretaker manager Richie Wellens.

'I'm glad it didn't happen in a way,' says Scholes. 'Manchester United was my life for 20-odd years and if I worked for another club I'm not sure it would feel right.'

Scholes looks out of the window at Neville, who is down on the pitch, and smiles. Neville's friends would tell you that he could start an argument in an empty house. This time, to change things up a bit, he has chosen to begin one in an empty stadium. Neville marches a lap of the pitch with his phone glued to his left ear and his voice rising now and again in exasperation. He comes round in front of the dugouts, tells his opponent he has to go and hangs up. I ask him if he's been having a row. He nods with a wry smile.

Neville is good at arguments. He likes them. He usually wins them. 'I get United fans having a go at me on Twitter sometimes,' he says, referring to the conversation he's just had. 'Every so often I'll get their number and ring them up.'

We start a second lap of the pitch. We talk. Neville does not stop. Ever. He has already done a live 30-minute panel discussion on Sky with Scholes, Ryan Giggs and presenter Geoff Shreeves, had a row with a United fan and spoken to me. He's got a sponsors' lunch at Hotel Football, the building next to Old Trafford he co-owns, next.

Speaking to Oliver Holt (left) Scholes revealed that he applied for a job as United's U23 coach 

Then he's travelling down to London to provide his analysis for the Arsenal-Liverpool game on Friday night. Then he's doing the Leicester-United game on Saturday evening. He's annoyed because that means he'll miss Salford's match with Chorley that afternoon. Sometimes he gets a motorbike to spirit him to or from the Peninsula Stadium if time's tight. No wonder 'relentless' is one of his favourite words.

The breathless schedule is partly his nature and partly his plan. 'I'd looked at retirement,' he says, 'and I'd seen that when you stop, some people fall off the edge of a cliff.

'You're high and mighty when you're a player. You're doing something you love every single day and the adrenaline rush is unbelievable but then all of a sudden at 35 there's nothing. You have to retrain.

'I thought I had to fill my time first of all and I knew I needed to be stimulated to get up every day and want to do something, but I didn't quite know what to do so I thought I'd try a bit of everything in the first four or five years. I'm now settling back, believe it or not. It's just business and media now.

'I heard so many players saying, "I can't wait until I retire. I'll be sat on a beach. I'll be able to go on holiday." That lasts about three or four months. Then all of a sudden you wake up one morning and say, "What am I going to do?" The reality hits you. You have 30 or 40 years in front of you.

'Honestly, now I feel the happiest... I loved United more than anything in the world but there's not one day I wake up and wish I was going into training. I miss the people and the camaraderie and lifting trophies but I love doing what I'm doing now.'

Scholes, who is heavily involved at Salford City, believes that United may have rejected his job application due to some of the comments he made about the club while working as a TV pundit

So we walk around the club that he bought three years ago with his brother Phil, Scholes, Giggs, Nicky Butt and Singapore businessman Peter Lim, and who now sit six points clear at the top of the National League North and I ask him about the phrase that is emblazoned on the wall of the bar in the main stand. 'The welfare of the people is the highest law,' it says.

It sounds like something Bill Shankly might have said. Or Sir Alex Ferguson, the man who opened the Peninsula Stadium in October. Both those great men saw football as an integral part of Britain's social history and as a means of societal improvement and Neville is no different.

'We looked at the crest of Salford and there are two for the city,' says Neville. 'One has on it "Integrity and Industry" and other "The Welfare of the People is the Highest Law". We're the cheapest season ticket in the league and along with FC United the cheapest matchday ticket. We try to make it as fan-friendly as possible.

'We have a sign saying "Integrity and Industry" at the stadium's front entrance. If you're an honest player and work hard, you have a great chance. We believe that. They are the city's values. People from Salford are earthy, real, determined, forceful.

Neville said that Scholes is 'brilliant on television' but suggested that he belongs on the pitch

'Salfordians are really proud to point out they're not from Manchester. They'll tell you what part of Salford they're from. If you're from Salford you'll say, "I'm from LH, Little Hulton", or, "I'm from Swinton". They'll tell you the zone of the city. They're proud of their roots in the city.

'When I watched my first game here with Scholesy, Giggsy and Phil, it hooks you in. What I loved about it was that we'd lean on the stanchion and we'd be talking during the match, having a drink, you can hear every shout, and it felt for the first time since I used to go to the match with my dad as a kid that I was back as a fan and there was a sense of the social experience.

'When I was younger going to cricket, the families all go, the mums are there, someone's making the tea, the burgers. It felt the same coming here. We come at half one for a three o'clock kick-off and the kids come and you think , "Actually, I like this".'

'What's community? I don't think community exists that much any more. Local people getting together and going to the local pub? That's gone. Maybe the school run? But the sports club is the greatest creator of community now. The cricket club, for one. I go and watch my daughter play netball on a Sunday morning and all the mums and dads are there and they're all talking. Sport brings people together and that's what I think about Salford City.'

As the end of the lap approaches, I ask Neville about Scholes. He has always told me that Scholes has the best sense of humour in football and he gets his phone out and plays me a clip from 'Class of 92 Full Time', the documentary about the Salford City project, to illustrate one of the things that makes him like the former England midfielder so much.

Neville and Scholes were successful United team-mates, winning 19 PL titles between them

In the clip Neville, Scholes and a few others are in a conference room. There is a display on a screen that includes some of Neville's buzzwords: relentless, ruthless, organised. Neville is talking about the style he would like Salford to play and Scholes, who says it's all about winning, is shooting him down at every turn.

'Can you not put it on your thing?' Scholes says eventually. 'What?' says Neville, starting to laugh, starting to realise he is about to be taken apart by Scholes' sardonic brutality.

'That we're allowed to go long if it's the last 10 minutes,' says Scholes, enjoying himself now. 'We're getting beat 1-0. The manager's looking at his watch thinking, "F***ing hell, can we launch it here? Is Gaz watching?" He'll be on the side of the pitch with your document, saying, "Is this the relentless bit? Are we organised? When do we need to start being ruthless?"'

Neville takes the phone back. 'When I look at Paul Scholes,' he says, 'I look at him in a TV studio and I think he's brilliant on television but when you see him on a football pitch, that's where he feels at home. I know he has ambitions in football and I hope he gets the right role.

'I've seen him doing little bits of training sessions when we do things with the club here or with our academy and he just steps into a comfort zone. He's on the pitch. He steps into being him. He belongs on a football pitch, on a training pitch, with players. That's Paul Scholes to me.' 

The United duo were also long-time England team-mates - pictured here at Euro 2004

Class of '92 – Full Time will be shown on Sky Sports Premier League on Sunday at 10pm. All three episodes are available on demand and on Sky Go.