Sir Alex Ferguson was satisfied to see the return of Wayne Rooney and Darren Fletcher, while praising the way his team's young defense coped with the Newcastle forwards in Manchester United's 2-1 League Cup third-round win at Old Trafford.
Fletcher, who made a substitute appearance in United's Champions League game against Galatasaray, made his full return from a chronic bowel condition, captaining the United side. Rooney, meanwhile, also started from the beginning after missing a month due to a severe gash suffered in the English Premier League game against Fulham.
Ferguson could not have been happier to see two of his key players make a successful return. "Wayne Rooney and Darren Fletcher were excellent -- Wayne understandably tired a little towards the end but that was to be expected," Ferguson told Sky Sports. "I'm really pleased for the both of them.
"They have all done really well. Some of them tired but that was understandable as it was a first game for some of them."
Ferguson was also pleased with the efforts of goalscorers Anderson and Tom Cleverley. "I'm very pleased for Anderson and Cleverley -- both of them were terrific strikes," he said. "The second goal was a great bit of football and Tom has done well to sidefoot the ball home. It was a really good performance."
What really made Ferguson's day, however, was the performance of his young defenders, which included the likes of Harry Keane. "They did their best," Ferguson said. "It was difficult. (Shola) Ameobi is a massive big lad, a handful, and (Papiss) Cisse has a lot of experience and is a terrific player.
"He's one of the best players at the club and it was a compliment to us that they did that. So I thought they handled it quite well.
"The name of the game here is to win football matches. Tonight we've given a lot of youngsters and squad players a game. If we progress, they will be involved."
After a far from convincing performance against Liverpool, where they were lucky to come away with all three points, Ferguson felt against Newcastle they more than deserved the victory. "Given the tie was an all-Premier League one and Newcastle are probably a stronger team than us physically, we played some fantastic football," he added.
"We kept on playing our football and perservered with that and had good composure in our game.
"I was really pleased with that and I think we deserved to win. Newcastle are a very powerful team so it's good to get through that one."
It won't get any easy for United in the Capital One Cup, with the Red Devils now having to travel to Stamford Bridge to face Chelsea in the next round.
