Neville and Rooney doubtful

Sir Alex has confirmed Gary Neville and Wayne Rooney are doubts ahead of Saturday's visit to Blackburn.

Rooney was forced off the pitch against Aalborg on Tuesday night with an ankle injury, while Neville missed the trip to Denmark after suffering a knock last weekend. Both players, however, engaged in light jogging on Friday morning.

But the visit to Ewood Park looks to have come too soon and the pair are likely to join Michael Carrick (ankle), Owen Hargreaves and Paul Scholes (both knee) on the sidelines.

"Losing Scholes is a blow because he’s such an important player," Sir Alex said. "But Paul has had a couple of long-term injuries like this and he’s always come back nice and fresh."

Scholes suffered medial ligament damage against Aalborg and is expected to be out for 10 weeks. And even though the midfielder is approaching 34, the United boss has no concerns over his ability to recover from this latest setback.

"He only needs to look at Gary Neville, who was out for 18 months and has come back fantastically well. You have to admire the perseverance and determination he’s shown to come back – it’s an inbred characteristic in all of the players. I’m very confident Paul will be back and will play for easily another year.

"It was a worry when he had that eye injury [in 2006/07] because at the time we couldn’t find an answer. But he came back from that and did the same from his injury last season and he’ll come back from this one.

"Even though he can’t do any football work at the moment, he’ll be working away in the gym so he’s ready for when he comes back."