Sir Alex is preaching patience with United's Academy side as Paul McGuinness' youngsters bid to emulate last year's FA Youth Cup winners.
The Under-18s progressed to the fifth round of the famous competition with a 2-1 victory against Derby County at Altrincham's Moss Lane on Wednesday night in front of the United manager, who sat alongside chief executive David Gill in the stands.
It is felt that the talented teenagers have a lot of growing and maturing still to do so everybody at the club is delighted that another run in the tournament is unfolding.
"It's a very young group," Sir Alex told MUTV before the win against the Rams. "Physically, they are well short of last year's group and age-wise too.
"I think we've only got one or two players performing from last year. I think Tyler Blackett is one player left from last year [Gyliano van Velzen is another]. It's a young squad with a lot of 16-year-olds in the team.
"You hope if they get through this stage, by the turn of the next two or three months, they start to develop physically and it may give them a little chance in that respect."
The boss feels the much-heralded 1992 FA Youth Cup winners were also a young side but they developed into one of the best teams seen at that level by the time that the trophy was handed out.
"If you go back to the '92 team, they were all first-years also," he recalled. "But they were a bit more physically developed.
"The only one weak in that particular youth team was David Beckham - his birthday was in May so he was still only 16 then and he wasn't involved in the early part of the Youth Cup. By the time we got to the semi-finals, he'd started to sprout up to 6ft 1in or something like that. He found a bit of strength and played in the semis and the final.
"It could happen the same way with this group. At the moment, they are not particularly strong for their age."
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