Manchester United have received further positive injury news with reports that Mikael Silvestre and Ben Foster are making steady recoveries.
French defender Silvestre and goalkeeper Foster have been sidelined by knee injuries since August and May respectively, with the latter still yet to make his senior Manchester United debut.
But, after hearing that both Paul Scholes and Gary Neville are very close to full comebacks, Sir Alex Ferguson was pleased to hear the added good news.
"Mikael's actually doing some of his recovery in France," the Red Devils boss said.
"That's not a problem as far as we're concerned because he's such a dedicated professional and he'll get the work done.
"Ben's also coming along fine and he's doing some goalkeeping work now. But we have to be careful with him. The specialist's assessment is that because it was a graft into the knee - he'd injured his cruciate before - we have to stick rigidly to the plan of almost a year out of action."