Sir Alex Ferguson has made a few things clear about his plans for our central midfielders today, and it answered some questions (and debunked some rumours doing the rounds lately).
When asked about Carrick and Anderson, he said, “there are no issues at all.”
“Michael wasn’t involved against Birmingham or Wigan because we played Burnley on the Wednesday and it was a chance to freshen up. That’s exactly what he did. We also had [Darren] Fletcher and [Paul] Scholes back [for Wigan}, so it was just a matter of freshening it up. Anderson was also left out. I read stuff about a dust-up with Anderson which is absolute rubbish. Absolute nonsense.”
He also spoke about Gibson, which should encourage the lad, and make us expect a lot more appearances from him this season. “We are also trying to push Gibson on as much as we can because the boy has improved at a fantastic rate of knots. We’ve been really impressed with him. That’s the reason. There’s no reason other than that.”
Other than a dramatic turnaround, that should put to rest any speculation on us making more signings in central midfield this summer. Speaking of midfielders, Hargreaves is expected to return in late September.
And finally, for sake of completeness on midfielders, here is an article in the Guardian on Darren Fletcher; Louise Taylor being the latest to latch onto the praise-Darren-Fletcher bandwagon — something we’ve banged on about for a long time.
