Youngsters To Get Another Go

Last updated : 30 November 2009 By Utd Mad Ed

Sir will be putting out the same team that lost at home to Besiktas in the Champions League last week.

This means that the likes of Danny Welbeck, Federico Macheda, Rafael, Gabriel Obertan, Anderson and Darron Gibson are all set to feature.

"It will be the same players that played on Wednesday," Ferguson said. "Their future is well marked out, I think.

"One journalist wrote, 'there's no future for these players, no tomorrow for them'. What an idiot. I can't believe that. It's unbelievable.

"When Beckham, Butt, Scholes and all those lads played in 1996, they were 22 years of age - three years ahead of these players. So that kind of reaction is amazing, isn't it?

"Of course they will grow from that experience. I was confident of playing them and they had every right to play. They will play on Tuesday, too.

"They got anxious. They'd made good chances but hurried things - that's not the biggest crime in the world. We're not talking about ability here, we're talking about experience.

"That's why we have to play them. Games are the one thing we have to give them. We can't just give them that old head that helps you deal with situations like on Wednesday in the final third of the field.

"The number of young players we have is stacking up, they need to be challenged. I thought they did OK and I didn't think they deserved that kind of criticism.

"But the same journalists will be wanting articles from them when they're stars, going cap-in-hand, begging them for interviews in a few years' time - mark my words on that.

"They'll be hypocritical and say, 'I've always said you were going to be a wonderful player'. What a world we live in."