Sir Alex Ferguson has reiterated that Manchester United goalkeeper Ben Foster will not be leaving the club on loan in January.

Foster has been tipped to join another Premier League club for the second half of the season in order to boost his prospects of claiming a place in England’s World Cup squad.

Sunderland and Tottenham have been linked with the 26-year-old, who started the season as first choice while Edwin van der Sar was injured.

However, during Van der Sar’s latest injury absence, Poland international Tomasz Kuszczak has been preferred between the posts by United boss Ferguson.

It has led to suggestions that Ferguson is prepared to let Foster go out on loan in January, but the Red Devils chief has no plans to sanction a move.

“Nothing is going to happen with Ben,” said Ferguson. “He is here and this is where he stays.”

Edwin wait

Meanwhile, Van der Sar is due to return from injury in a week’s time and Ferguson also expects to soon hear from the 39-year-old Dutchman regarding his future plans.

Van der Sar’s contract expires at the end of the season and there have been reports that the keeper will delay retirement for one more campaign.

Ferguson added: “Edwin usually comes to us around this time and tells us what he wants to do.

“It generally comes in the form of a telephone call from his agent to (chief executive) David Gill, but we have not received it yet.

“At the moment Edwin has an injury, but it is not serious and he could be ready for next week.”

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Sir Alex Ferguson has claimed that ‘never in a million years’ did he expect Mark Hughes to make the step up into management.

The Manchester United boss was at the helm of the Old Trafford outfit while the Manchester City manager was on the Red Devils’ playing staff in his days as a marauding forward.

The Welshman has gone on to carve out a successful career in the dugout with spells at the helm of his national side, Blackburn Rovers and now City.

Hughes is the envy of many Premier League managers given the vast riches at his disposal as he is charged with the task of turning the Eastlands outfit into a Premier League force.

City are targeting a top-four finish this season and will face their bitter rivals in the two-legged Carling Cup semi-finals early next year.

That will pit veteran boss Ferguson against Hughes once again, with the Scot surprised at which of his charges have made a success of coaching.

Difficult

He told Inside United: “It’s difficult to assess that because you don’t know what ambitions the players have.

“Currently we’ve got (Ryan) Giggs, (Paul) Scholes and (Gary) Neville taking their coaching badges. That’s great and I encourage them to do that because it gives them a platform if they want to stay in the game.

“It can be difficult to pinpoint who would make it as a manager.

“For instance, nobody here thought Mark Hughes would become a manager, never in a million years, and we all thought Bryan Robson was a certainty to be a top manager.”

Ferguson is still unsure as to who poses the greatest threat to United’s bid for silverware this season, with both City and Chelsea boasting vast financial resources.

He added: “It’s difficult to say with so much money coming into the game. Manchester City have millions, Chelsea have money and you can’t count out anyone.

“You don’t know where the next deluge of money’s going to come from. You just have to say, ‘Here’s another challenge.’ We won’t be afraid of it.”

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Nemanja Vidic is expected to return to Manchester United’s injury-ravaged defence for Saturday’s Premier League meeting with Aston Villa.

Red Devils boss Sir Alex Ferguson was forced to employ a back four of Patrice Evra, Park Ji-sung, Michael Carrick and Darren Fletcher against Wolfsburg in the UEFA Champions League on Tuesday night.

Ferguson was missing 14 senior men for the clash in Germany, eight of them defenders, with his midfield trio forced to drop back to play alongside captain for the night Evra.

The hat-trick heroics of Michael Owen fired United to a 3-1 success and top spot in Group B as the makeshift backline performed well.

Serbia international Vidic has now recovered from the illness which kept him out of the victories over Wolfsburg and West Ham and will slot back in against Villa.

“I expect Vidic to be fit and if he is available we would have him and Michael Carrick, plus Darren Fletcher and Patrice Evra,” Ferguson said.

“I would be happy enough with that.”

System

Ferguson also expects to have Ryan Giggs, Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov available to face Martin O’Neill’s men, who have once again moved to the fringes of a top-four place.

That might mean a quick relegation back to the substitutes’ bench for Owen, who marked a rare start by converting his first Champions League treble since 2003.

Ferguson is delighted with the contribution of his free transfer summer signing and admitted United’s regular formation goes some way to explaining his lack of starts.

He added: “I made the point some weeks ago that his training performances have improved steadily. I have had no worries about him.

“Obviously in some games recently we have only played with one striker and Wayne Rooney has been it. Here we used a different system.”

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Michael Owen felt that Manchester United’s 3-1 win over Wolfsburg was a team effort despite the striker scoring all three goals.

The former Liverpool man struck a minute before half-time and added two more against the run of play in the final 10 minutes, after Edin Dzeko had equalised for Wolfsburg.

However the 29-year-old, Owen is 30 next week, admitted that United had flourished as a team after numerous injuries had decimated their defence.

Patrice Evra, United’s only recognised defender in the entire squad, started alongside Darren Fletcher, Michael Carrick and Park Ji-Sung in an unfamiliar backline.

“Me getting three goals will probably grab the headlines, but it was a great team performance,” Owen, who took his season tally to seven, said.

Absentees

“I was playing deep with us having so many players out and we were trying to protect the back four.”

The win for the Red Devils made sure they finished on top of the group and Owen is now hoping for a favourable draw in the last-16.

“It’s great being top so we play at home second,” he added. “But I’m not going to lie, you want as weak a side as possible.

“If a team’s got to first or second in the Champions League, there’s no weak sides, although you obviously want to avoid the big boys.”

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Hull City manager Phil Brown has told Sky Sports News that Jimmy Bullard has not suffered any serious knee ligament damage.

The influential midfielder has been ruled out for six to eight weeks, but that is a boost as there were serious fears he could have suffered cruciate knee ligament damage for a third time in his career.

Bullard suffered his latest injury at Aston Villa on Saturday, and he was visibly upset amid fears his season could have been over before it had barely started.

Bullard only made his comeback from his last injury in October, but his impact was tremendous as he won Premier League Player of the Month for November.

Now scans have confirmed that he has only sprained medial ligaments, which will rule him out until the end of January.

Six to eight weeks

“Jimmy is going to be out between six and eight weeks, a totally separate injury to anything he has had before,” Brown told Sky Sports News.

“It is a grade 2 sprain on his medial ligament, it is not connected with anterior cruciate ligament.

“Whichever way you look – on the negative front we are losing a very good player for six weeks, but on the other side it could have been a lot longer.

“It has been a horrendous day [waiting], but you talk about popularity – the amount of well wishers and people asking about Jimmy, it is fantastic the response to one of the most popular players in the country.

“I am hopeful that Jimmy will be back on the field of play before the transfer window closes – that is what I am looking at and hopefully what everyone else is looking at.

“It also gives us a chance to strengthen his other leg, it hasn’t been a problem but it gives us a chance to strengthen.”