'I think you would be silly not to look to the future,' said Ferguson. 'Lads like the Nevilles, Scholes, Butt, Giggs or even Roy Keane are not going to be around forever. You have to start preparing to replace them, but that will not be for a few years yet.'
'Hopefully by then the young players will have learned the game and will know what Manchester United is all about. We are still a young side and those players will be here for quite a while.'
Ferguson told the News of the World that it is unlikely that United will enjoy the same good fortune with the youth team as we have in the past.
"A generation like that of the Nevilles, Butt, Scholes and Giggs is exceptional but it might only happen once in a lifetime. That's why we had to cast our net out wider. To continue feeding the first team, we had to go down that road."
"The future of the club is a preoccupation and that's why I'm always on the look-out for certain signs. When I see, for example, that Roy Keane had an operation on his hip and will be 33 in August, that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has been injured for most of the season and will be 32 next year, then I can't allow myself to wait for them to take their retirement. So I am always having to try to make sure the reconstruction process is an evolutionary one. That's why we bought lots of young players last summer. Some of them have done well, some have yet to prove themselves — and I say yet."