‘He only said what everyone was thinking. They’d sold the superstars and we were little spotty-faced kids coming into the team’ Nicky Butt on Alan Hansen’s ‘you can’t win anything with kids’

We’ve all made footballing predictions which go horribly wrong or age like milk.

Thankfully, most of us only do that in the pub with a group of mates, not to an audience of millions of people watching on TV.

When Alan Hansen appeared on the first Match of the Day of the 1995/96 season he produced perhaps the most famous soundbite of his distinguished broadcasting career, as he claimed that ‘you can’t win anything with kids’ after watching a young Manchester United side lost 3-1 to Aston Villa.

Butt on Hansen’s ‘you can’t win anything with kids’ declaration

Famously, the former Liverpool centre-back would be proved wrong, as Sir Alex Ferguson’s side - who had an average age of 26 years and 137 days that season - swept to a Premier League and FA Cup Double.

The likes of Gary Neville (aged 20), Paul Scholes (20), Ryan Giggs (21), Phil Neville (18), Nicky Butt (20), and David Beckham (20) all played their part that season, as the Class of 92 came of age.

Fergie had decided to roll the dice on his academy stars that season following some high-profile exits, as the likes of Andrei Kanchelskis, Paul Ince and Mark Hughes departed, with goalkeepers Tony Coton and Nick Culkin the only new faces in that summer.

It’s perhaps easy to understand why Hansen was so resolute in writing off the Red Devils’ chances that season and Butt, who made 41 appearances that season, saw where he was coming from.

“He only said what everyone was thinking,” Butt admits to FourFourTwo. “Don’t forget it wasn’t only the fact that we got put in, they’d sold the superstars – Paul Ince, Mark Hughes, Andrei Kanchelskis.

“They went and we were little spotty-faced kids coming into the team. We were thinking, “We’ve just ruined the football club here, we’re not as good as they think we are”.

“But the manager kept faith and it came good.”

Butt would later cross paths with the former Scotland defender and tell him just as much.

“I met Alan Hansen years later, I think I’d retired by then, and he brought up what he’d said. I told him, “You were 100 per cent right, it was ridiculous what a gamble the manager made.”

The Good, The Bad & The Football with Scholes, Butt and McGuinness is a new weekly video podcast, available on all major podcast platforms and YouTube