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Sir Alex Ferguson was left with mixed emotions after a largely youthful Manchester United side booked their place in the League Cup final with a 4-3 aggregate win over Derby County.
United’s 4-2 victory at Old Trafford here on Tuesday against the second-tier strugglers, who took a shock 1-0 lead into this half of the tie, came at the cost of injuries to Jonny Evans, Rafael and Anderson.
“We have a few injuries tonight so it has been a bad night in that respect but we are in the final and we should be celebrating that,” Ferguson told Sky Sports.
“Finals are always hard to get in to and the young lads have done fantastically well to get there. It was a great performance and they (the youngsters) will all be playing in the final.
“The important thing is to find out what their temperament is and they have all proved that tonight. Playing on big occasions in front of 75,000 is difficult and I’m proud of them.”
Turning to his casualty list, Ferguson added: “Anderson’s going to have to go for an X-ray. There’s some damage. We’re not exactly sure what but we’ll see what happens.
“Evans has had a recurrence of an ankle injury that he has been holding for a few weeks, but hopefully he’ll be back next week.
“Rafael has a hamstring injury and he’ll be out for a few weeks.”
Derby were all but out of the tie after going in at half-time 3-0 down but they did stage a late rally late on thanks to a Giles Barnes penalty and free-kick.
It all left manager Nigel Clough ruing Derby’s failure to make more of their first leg dominance.
“If we would have got the second at home maybe things could have been different,” Clough said. “We couldn’t do anything about the first goal tonight but the second was a killer.
“Rob Hulse had a good chance with a header but nothing seemed to drop for us. It was good for Giles to get a couple, he’s been out for a long time.
“It would be very easy to give up the ghost, 3-0 down at Old Trafford, and we could have been on the end of five or six.
I asked them to defend a bit better and have a go and I thought we did that. We took the game to them as much as we could.”
Clough added his side’s performance was a marked improvement on his first game in charge which ended in a 2-0 loss against QPR.
“It was a big improvement actually on Saturday,” said Clough, whose late father Brian was Derby’s manager when the unfashionable Midlands side became champions of England for the first time in 1972.
“United can beat anyone on their day by four, five or six so we have a lot of positives to take from tonight,” added Clough, whose side face a tantalising FA Cup fourth round match with Nottingham Forest – who he played for and whom his father guided to two European Cup titles – on Friday.
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