'How can you analyse that,' raged Ferguson. 'When people watch it on TV they will laugh. It was bewildering. Even the Aston Villa bench couldn't understand it.'
'The seriousness of it is that we have now lost two players for the first two games of next season.'
Ferguson sees Fletcher as a replacement for Keane should the United captain fail to be fit for Cardiff.
'Darren has come on terrifically, he is improving all the time and is getting stronger as well. Hopefully Roy will be back training on either Monday or Tuesday but if he doesn't make it, I would have no worries about playing Darren next week at all.'