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Fergie's Fledglings were a group of Manchester United players recruited under the management of Sir Alex Ferguson (often nicknamed "Fergie") and trained by assistant coaches Brian Kidd and Eric Harrison, before eventually progressing to the first team during the 1990s. The alliteration in the term is a clear homage to the Busby Babes, the famously youthful Manchester United team assembled by the club's other legendary manager Sir Matt Busby and his assistant coach Jimmy Murphy during the 1950s. ==The late 1980s Fledglings== The term "Fergie's Fledglings" was first coined by the media in the 1988–89 season to describe a group of young footballers who were introduced into the Manchester United first team by the manager Alex Ferguson. The group included players from the team which reached the final of the 1986 FA Youth Cup such as Lee Martin, Tony Gill and David Wilson, and other youth team players such as Russell Beardsmore, Mark Robins and Deiniol Graham as well as young players bought from other clubs such as Lee Sharpe (Torquay United) and Giuliano Maiorana (Histon). There was some initial success for the Fledglings; in only his second start, Beardsmore inspired the team to a 3–1 win over rivals Liverpool, and an injury crisis saw Gill, Graham and Wilson drafted into the first team for an FA Cup third round replay against Queens Park Rangers in which both Gill and Graham scored. However, serious injuries and loss of form meant that most of these players did not build on their initial success and the term "Fergie's Fledglings" had fallen out of use by the following season. Beardsmore and Robins made over 50 appearances each for Manchester United but were unable to hold down places in the first team. However, Robins did score a winning goal against Nottingham Forest in the Third Round of the 1990 FA Cup. That goal is popularly believed to have saved Ferguson's job at United. Of the original batch of Fledglings, only Martin and Sharpe made more than 100 appearances for Manchester United making important contributions towards Ferguson's first trophies such as the FA Cup in 1990 and the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1991. However, Sharpe was the only one of this group of players left at the club by the end of the 1993–94 season, and by the time he was sold to Leeds United in August 1996 he had played in three league-winning teams, two FA Cup-winning teams, and also won both a Cup Winners' Cup and a Football League Cup, as well as being voted PFA Young Player of the Year in 1991. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Fergie's Fledglings」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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