Ferguson vows to bring saga to an end

Manchester United 1 Bursaspor 0

Rooney’s controversial statement that he wants to quit Old Trafford because of concerns over the future strength of the squad has left Ferguson badly stung – and after his team beat Bursaspor 1-0 in the Champions League with a goal from Nani last night he was in no mood to take it lying down.

In the second explosive press conference in two days the United manager hinted at decisive action as he said: “I haven’t read all the statement. But David and I will have a meeting on Thursday at 10am and we’ll asses the whole situation. We don’t want this carrying on.

“David spoke to the owners tonight which is important. What is really important is for us to put this to bed. We don’t want it to become a saga. I’m a manager who wants to win a game against Stoke City on Sunday. This is a bagatelle.

“We have a massive game on Sunday and we have to concentrate on that because our supporters deserve that. If we continue with one player dominating headlines and dominating our thoughts we are not doing our job. Nipping it in the bud is the key to it and we’ll do that tomorrow.”

Ferguson’s words were somewhat cryptic, but the only options must be to either put Rooney on the transfer list or send him on gardening leave – both of which signal the end of his United career.

Once again it was clear that Ferguson was seething about the suggestion his club are in some way lacking in ambition or no longer able to challenge the biggest in the world, and he launched a strong and passionate defence of his transfer policy.

He said: “To continue to maintain our high level of consistency, we had to inject youth into the club. We realised some years ago that Giggs, Scholes and Neville are never going to last forever and therefore our policy is to develop players in their place. We had a player who once said to me that Rooney and Ronaldo weren’t good enough. Can you believe that? They actually said they weren’t good enough. And they weren’t prepared to wait until they were good enough.

“And that’s the problem with potential. People don’t identify potential, or they’re very poor at it. I’ve been identifying it all my life. I know potential. I know where it can be developed. I know how to develop it. And I have faith in it. And young people surprise you when given opportunity.

“We will invest in players when the time is ready. This summer was not ready as far as I was concerned. There was no value for me. There was one player, yes, we would have been delighted to have got. But he chose another club and I don’t think he ever wanted to come here. Some players don’t ever want to leave their country. Manchester United is always a big attraction for any player but if they don’t want to leave their country then we just forget about it.”

Ferguson is adamant that with or without Rooney the future is bright at Old Trafford, even though his team – featuring mostly second-string players – struggled to a dreary 1-0 victory over a poor Bursaspor side that at least puts them in control at the top of Group C. He said: “In terms of the future of Manchester United, there are a lot of things in our favour; history, the respect we have. If I tell you how many agents phone me and email my secretary in a week with players that want to play for us it’s amazing.

“Sometimes you look in a field and you see a cow and you think it’s a better cow than the one you’ve got in your own field. But it never really works out that way.

“Also it’s difficult to maintain a cycle of more than four years. Three league trophies in a row is fantastic and if we’d done the fourth it would have been a record – but we lost it by one point. We don’t like that and we’re trying to do something about it. But we’ll get there, I have every confidence in that.

“There is nothing wrong with Manchester United, not a thing wrong with it. So we’ll carry on.”

Rooney, almost certainly however, will not.

Subs for Man United: Obertan for Park 71, Hernandez for Anderson 77.

Subs for Bursaspor: Ibraham Ozturk for Stepanov 45, Turgay Bahadir for Sercan Yildirim 45, Mustafa Keceli for Tandogan 71.