Paul Scholes blames a "crazy season of injuries" for Manchester United's disappointing season, with the former midfielder confident that in the long term David Moyes will reverse their fortunes.

United are seventh and will drop 12 points off a Champions League place if they lose at Arsenal and Liverpool beat Fulham on Wednesday evening. Yet Scholes believes that the absence of key players has seriously hampered Moyes during his inaugural season in charge.

"I don't think the manager can legislate for the amount of injuries he has had to deal with," he said. "We've missed [Wayne] Rooney and [Robin] van Persie for big chunks of the season – they are two of the best centre-forwards in the world and any team would miss them. When we finally got them both back for the game against Stoke [the 2-1 defeat on 1 February], suddenly we had four centre-halves not fit to play.

"It's been a crazy season for injuries. Hopefully we'll get a bit of luck with injuries and I'm sure if we get all our players fit we'll get moving up the league."

Scholes, who retired in the summer after two decades at United, can recall many similar periods of dire form during his career. "We'll always come back from bad patches like this. We have been on worse runs," he said. "I think there was a time that we went three years [ending in 2007] without winning the league, which was a disaster for a club of this size – this is nothing in comparison.

"Once the manager gets his own players in, gets his defenders fit and Rooney and Van Persie flying again, I'm sure we'll be OK."