After making his senior debut on Wednesday night, Darren Fletcher has been boosted by words of encouragement from Sir Alex Ferguson.

The young Scottish midfielder started alongside Nicky Butt, Phil Neville and fellow junior Kieran Richardson, and Fergie felt that Fletch did fine on the night.

"Darren has a chance," said the Boss after the match.

"He is a year older than Kieran and that probably helped him last night.

"He has had a difficult start to his career at the club, suffering a broken foot which fractured again when he came back too soon, then missing 10 weeks with an ankle injury.

"He was also physically very immature. He is still skin and bone really but he has very good ability and there is a lot of common sense about his play."

However, it was a less successful night for Kieran Richardson, who was replaced by Ryan Giggs at the break.

"In contrast, Kieran is still a youth team player and he found it difficult. When you bring young players in like that, they don't always respond simply because we are trying a team which has never played together before.

"It made it difficult for the lad but he will be okay. His day will come."