Both Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra joined United in the summer of 2006. However, they needed time to adapt to the Premier League and Sir Alex Ferguson told them to play for Rene Meulensteen's U21 side. The Serb has recently recalled his disastrous performance against the youngsters:
"Patrice and I came to United together and there’s a funny story. We were preparing to play in the Premier League, we were with Rene Meulensteen. He was the coach of the under-21s and Fergie told us to play with them just to have a match. We needed to get some form as we could not play our first match as a Premier League one.
"So we said OK but we weren’t happy to play under-21s. After 45 minutes, Rene told me and Patrice to have a shower. We did not play well. He was really shocked. Patrice and I looked at each other and said ‘wow’.
Vidic has thanked Fergie for his trust as it took him some months to get used to the pace of the Premier League: "We really struggled to adapt to playing football always forward. When you play European football, you always play sideways, around. But in England it’s always forward and physical. Even at under-21s, you think it’s a foul but the referee tells you to keep playing.
"So that was really the biggest problem to our game in the first six months but I adapted. Fergie had the patience to wait for us and the players helped us through a difficult time."
