Ryan Giggs and his team-mates celebrate their Champions League victory in Moscow three years ago

Somewhat uncharacteristically, Ryan Giggs has been featured on more newspaper front pages than back of late.

It seems the whole country, indeed most of the world, has got itself all of a twitter over his alleged dalliances with an image of Thomas, Miss Wales’s big brother, or something along those lines.

The whole alleged affair is, of course, about as interesting as room-temperature tap water. With the Champions League Final on Saturday, it is thankfully very easy to ignore the overblown outcry of the red-tops and focus on what has to be the most important game of Giggs’s illustrious Manchester United career.

This final represents Giggs’s chance at a third Champions League Winners’ medal, which would equal a record currently held by Clarence Seedorf alone. If winning the biggest club competition in the world needed any extra incentive, that surely is it.

If he wishes to remove himself from the gossip columns and sit with the elite in the history books, however, he will have to earn the privilege. United are braced to meet the mighty Barcelona in the Wembley final on Saturday, and for once, United are outsiders.

If they are to rain on Barcelona’s parade, United will have to utilise Giggs very wisely. It seems likely that he will play alongside Michael Carrick in the centre of midfield. The jury is still out on the rest of the starting line-up, but the smart money is on Park Ji-Sung and Antonio Valencia starting on the left and right wings respectively.

This formation has served them well in Europe so far this season, but there is huge emphasis on Giggs to be at the peak of his form. Ferguson will use Park and Valencia to try to thwart Barcelona’s massive attacking threat down the wings, with Carrick doing much the same in the middle.

All well and good so far, but if Ferguson is too preoccupied with cancelling out Barcelona’s attacking strengths, he will put his team on the back foot from the first whistle. This is where Giggs’s own attacking prowess will come into play.

In the last few seasons, we have seen more and more of Giggs the playmaker, pulling the strings in United’s midfield while the spotlight has shone on the likes of Ronaldo and Nani. While teams were getting suckered in by their trickery, Giggs was picking their pockets.

Though he will undoubtedly have to spend a lot of his time defending, he will have to pounce on any stray balls in midfield and try to release Rooney and Hernandez, or at least alleviate some of the pressure on the United back line by running at Barcelona and holding the ball up. When playing against the Catalans, a minute’s rest from defending is invaluable, and United will be looking to Giggs to provide as much respite as possible.

There is, of course, no question that he is suffering from any mental ill-effects from the past week or so. At Gary Neville’s testimonial match on Tuesday night, he was as focused as ever, his trademark expressionless face proof of his ability to concentrate solely on the matter at hand.

Speaking at the start of Giggs’s career, Ferguson said he is “brilliant at being able to take on board what is important and disregarding everything else.” If two decades in the game have done anything, they have given Giggs the time to hone and nurture that talent.

There is nothing that hasn’t been said about Giggs in the past few weeks, let alone the last 20 years. All of it superfluous. His mental strength, his physical prowess, his ability to read the game, the records he has broken all speak for themselves.

It seems absurd that after so long at the top of the game that Ryan Giggs should have to prove anything to anyone. While his lawyers will be wasting their time trying to prove who broke his super injunction, all Giggs has to prove is that he’s still capable of magic.