Ferguson confirms Rooney to miss Blackburn trip

Alex Ferguson has confirmed that Wayne Rooney will miss Sunday’s trip to Blackburn but could return for next week’s Manchester derby.

The England striker, who suffered an ankle injury in the 2-1 defeat at Bayern Munich last week, aggravated the problem at Old Trafford on Wednesday.

United won that second leg tie 3-2 but with the Champions League quarter-final tie level at 4-4 they went out on away goals.

After playing almost half of Wednesday night’s match with 10 men, after Rafael was sent off, Ferguson admits he is considering making changes for the game at Blackburn.

He said: “We won’t have Wayne for Sunday. I don’t think it’s as serious as we said the first time and I think he’ll be ready for the City game and we’ve got more time to work on it.

“Given the nature of our game on Wednesday in terms of energy spent we have to address the situation in terms of freshness.

“We’ve got a squad to use with the experience of Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville.”

Ferguson is confident that his players will be able to bounce back from the disappointment of being knocked out of the Champions League.

Last weekend’s 2-1 defeat to Chelsea also saw United lose their advantage in their attempts to win a fourth straight title.

But with Chelsea not playing in the league until their home game against Bolton on Tuesday, United have the chance to move a point above Carlo Ancelotti’s side with a win at Ewood Park. And Ferguson is sure that his players will bounce back after their midweek frustration.

He added: “It’s not the first time we’ve had to face losing a big game and having to do something about it. We’ve got five games left and they’re five important games.

“Even if we win all of them it doesn’t mean we can win the league, with the position Chelsea are in but they’ve got those games to play themselves and at this time of the season, things can happen.

“We’ve faced this situation many times over the years after the disappointment of Wednesday. It’s part of the history of the club and we’ve been good at that.

“That’s the thing they need to be reminded of, they’ve done it in the past many times because they, as Manchester United players, always have to face the responsibility and expectation.

“They have a chance to win the league and so have Arsenal who are a point behind us but you’d rather be in Chelsea’s position, two points in the lead with five games left.

“We hope that something can happen.”

Ferguson has revealed that his move for Javier Hernandez was inspired by a fear that the striker could drive his price tag through the roof with good performances at the World Cup for Mexico.

United completed a reported six million pound deal for the Chivas de Guaralajara forward on Thursday.

He said: “We like doing these kind of deals where we can identify young talent. We’ve been good at that over the years. We got some background knowledge of the boy in October.

“We got one of our people to go there and watch a couple of games and the reports were very good and that was by December.

“We wanted to just wait because he was young but then he got into the national team and that created a problem because if he got to the World Cup and did well we were in danger of losing him.

“I sent my chief scout Jim Lawlor over there for three weeks to get some background on the boy and watch him play in Los Angeles against New Zealand.

“He played twice for the national team while he was there and playing for Chivas and he scored in every game.

“He filed a fantastic report and said that we needed to do something and we’re delighted to do the deal.”