Sir Alex Ferguson has confirmed that a whole host of Premier League clubs were interested in gaining the signature of the former Crewe Alexandra player, Nick Powell. The 18-year old scored 16 goals for Crewe last season, before his £6million move to Manchester United.
The boss was speaking to ManUtd.com when he revealed the club had been looking at the Crewe starlet when United played Crewe’s youth team a while back “We sent people to see him a few times after he started scoring a few goals, he actually first came on our radar a few years ago when he played against our youth team.”
SAF then confirmed we’d be watching him as a serious target just after the turn of the year “But we watched him seriously from February. Mike Phelan went to see him a few times and so did our chief scout, Jim Lawlor. My brother Martin also went to see him against Torquay before I went for myself, with Mike, when Crewe played Aldershot.”
Luckily, the club decided to act and make their move before the play-offs, with the club later claiming that the deal had already been done. Powell scored an absolute screamer from outside the box during that game, which could’ve let to bigger offers coming his way.
“We thought that if we waited until the play-offs the secret would be out, so to speak. All the TV cameras would be focussed on him and it might alert a few other clubs. Mind you, there were already quite a few interested. As well as Arsenal and Chelsea, we knew Manchester City were keeping tabs on him as well.”
“So I phoned Dario Gradi (Crewe director), told him we were keen and we started negotiating. We sorted the deal with the chairman and agreed we’d leave it until after the play-off finals. It was all in place a good 10 days beforehand. Nick’s agent told Nick after the match and then he came up to my house the next day and we got the deal done.”
Nick made his debut for his new club on Saturday vs. Ajax Cape Town as a substitute, he may feature again at some point today in the game vs. Shanghai Shenhua. You can watch the game live on MUTV at 1pm (UK time).
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