The manager sits down with me; I sit down with the board. We assess the success of the year. The manager assesses whose coming through the academy system. His job is to look at what is happening in European and world football.
Previously people were treated anonymously particular on a drugs situation which is obviously highly emotive. They have been treated anonymously even after the verdict had been reached.
Namely the manager will assess what he believes a player is worth and he will discuss that with the board and then we will go after that target. If we can achieve it at that target, great, but if we can't we will have to move on to the next player.
All I can do is assess the value from Manchester United perspective. Whatever Chelsea do, they may have a different criteria, and different financial assets.
We genuinely believe to this day that it was an honest genuine mistake and we never imagined the punishment would be eight months. The precedent dictated that it was unlikely to be that. We don't regret he played for that period.
A lot of them want to come and play for Manchester United. They want to play because Alex has a record of giving youth a chance and we have the history and heritage of Manchester United.
We had to support our player and genuinely felt, like Rio has said, that it was an honest mistake. It is important to know that Manchester United never said, and Rio Ferdinand never said, that a mistake hadn't been made.
We discussed buying a defender. The view was the priority at that time given the way we were playing was that we needed support up front and that is why we bought Louis Saha.
