The 69-year-old - a critic of signing players mid-season - insists he will only delve into European winter transfer window if a long-term target becomes available, and will avoid making any quick-fix signings.

Ferguson told MUTV: "I don't think I'll change my tactic on that (buying in January) because, if there's a player who I have been interested in, and he was available in January, we would try and do business."

"But there's no such player really on the horizon that way, unless we can identify someone we've been monitoring a lot because we don't buy just on a whim at this club."

"Normally, we try and have a good progress report on the player, particularly background information on him and there's no-one at this moment in time who meets that criteria."

Ferguson may instead look to his youth set-up to solve the club's injury woes, with the likes of Paul Pogba and Ravel Morrison likely to feature in the coming months.

"They're getting stronger as they get older. Paul Pogba will be 19 in March. Ezekiel Fryers has been involved. Larnell Cole, Jesse Lingard and Ravel Morrison have all been involved," he said.

"When you think, 'OK, possibly the standard has risen since the days when Ryan (Giggs) made his debut at 17, even our Darren (Ferguson) was young and Lee Sharpe made his debut at 17'. Quite a few players did at that time."

"But they have good ability and a good standard of play themselves so I wouldn't be adverse to trying one or two, particularly in home matches, and involving them as substitutes to give them parts of a game, which we tend to do with a lot of them. So that's certainly in my thoughts."