United may sign only one more player

Posted Wednesday, May 19, 2010 by theguardian.com

Sir Alex Ferguson may sign only one more player for United

Manchester United's manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, left, speaks with chief executive David Gill at a press conference in New York.

Sir Alex Ferguson may add just one more player to his Manchester United squad this summer as he plots to regain the Premier League title from Chelsea.

United's chief executive, David Gill, has indicated funds are available to his manager to spend this summer, but Ferguson revealed he is happy with the balance of his squad, which finished a point behind Chelsea. The United manager has, though, already signed the Mexican forward Javier Hernández from Guadalajara and the defender Chris Smalling from Fulham.

Speaking alongside Gill at a press conference in New York to promote United's four-game North American tour this summer, Ferguson said: "In the market today it's very difficult and the structure of our squad is good in terms of ages, the balance, the numbers and there's a lot of good young players. Sometimes you have to trust in all the development of the last few years and I'm going to stick with that, or most of it.

"There may be one signing and maybe we'd like to get a good player to the club, of course, but it's not easy in the present day climate and I've nothing definite to tell you because we're still assessing whoever's available and the difficulties in terms of who you'd bring in."

Gill added: "Hernández and Smalling are signings we've already made and the other point to bear in mind is that the Premier League is bringing in squad limits next year of 25, which we operate [in European competitions] but is now coming to the Premier League.

"There will be unlimited Under-21s and other rules and we'll be taking all that into consideration."

To that end, Ferguson also revealed he would not be replacing the goalkeeper Ben Foster with a new signing, instead promoting England Under-21 international Ben Amos to the first-team squad alongside Edwin van der Sar and Tomasz Kuszczak.

Foster is close to completing a £6m move to Birmingham City and the United manager is confident Amos has a bright future at Old Trafford.

"When we decided to let Ben [Foster] go, we were in the process of letting a good young goalkeeper, Ben Amos, go out on loan," Ferguson said. "He's in the England Under-21 team but we can only accommodate three goalkeepers. So when the situation with Ben's future at Manchester United came into it and we agreed to let him go, we stopped Ben Amos from going on loan.

"He will now be our third goalkeeper, he's very talented and has a good future ahead of him."

All three keepers are likely to travel across the Atlantic with the United squad this summer. The club will have a training camp in Chicago followed by friendlies against Celtic in Toronto on 16 July, the Philadelphia Union in Philadelphia on 21 July, the Kansas City Wizards in Kansas four days later and the MLS All-Stars in Houston on 28 July.

Ferguson will give his World Cup players leave of absence from the tour, which will move on to Mexico and a game against Guadalajara, which was agreed as part of the deal to sign Hernández.

Depending on Mexico's progress in South Africa, Hernández is pencilled in to feature in the game.

Ferguson added: "It depends when his last game is for Mexico. Normally we give the players 28 days' rest but in the case of Hernández we'll bring him to Philadelphia as soon as his games with Mexico are finished.

"The simple reason is he's young and I think he can handle coming in for training. More importantly, it's for him to integrate into the squad because he doesn't know any of the players."