‘CAPABLE HANDS' DEFENDS TRANSFER POLICY

Last updated : 05 September 2006 By Editor

"We understand the frustration of fans who feel we should have been more active. But we are very conscious that the quality in our squad is very high and therefore the players we bring in must add to that quality, they must be defined as reasonably valued and, very critically, we believe they must want to be a United player. They are the players we are interested in.

"We got Michael Carrick in and we are very pleased about that. We got Tomasz Kuszczak and I think it is important to remember that we strengthened the defence in January with Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra, which we planned to do.

"We are on record as saying that in the summer we wanted to buy two midfield players and we got one of them, but unfortunately we didn't get Owen Hargreaves.

"I can't say to Alex Ferguson that we want a certain player because it makes financial sense. We are doing it in order to improve the quality of what is an excellent squad.

"We were never interested in Tevez. Mascherano, we were offered him. We watched him throughout last season and at the World Cup. We were offered him at the start of the summer transfer window for a significant sum.

"The manager and his staff did not want to pursue that. We were also offered him towards the back end of last week in a loan-type deal for a year, and again we were not interested in that.

"From Manchester United's perspective, Tevez was never on the shopping list. Mascherano we watched very carefully and the experts on that area in our club determined that we did not want to go for him.

"We were offered to take him on loan for a season with a loan fee together with his salary obligations. The football side of United, the decision makers, didn't want to go for that deal. Clearly he is a very very good player, but he wasn't wanted.

"We were never interested in Trezeguet. That was a last- minute newspaper story," he said. "We never put a bid in. I think it was probably stories coming out of Italy to drum up interest in the player, I don't know. We were amused by those headlines."