Sir Alex Ferguson praised Manchester United starlet who 'saved me from embarrassment' but only played three times

Sitting pretty at the top of the Premier League table and 56 places above Crewe Alexandra in the English football pyramid, Manchester United ought not to have faced any difficulties against the League One Railwaymen.

But after beating Liverpool 2-0 in the Premier League at Old Trafford on October 22, 2006, United, just three days later, almost came unstuck in the third round of the League Cup at Gresty Road, narrowly avoiding one of the biggest upsets in the competition's history. Such was the Reds' level of superiority, former manager Sir Alex Ferguson, just as most Premier League managers have done when facing lower-league opposition, felt he was within his rights to make wholesale changes, calling upon his fringe players to get the job done with minimal fuss.

And after Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who faced competition from the likes of Wayne Rooney and Louis Saha for a starting berth at that time, had fired the Reds into a 26th-minute lead, they were well on their way to getting the job done without too much fuss.

However, following Luke Varney's equaliser with 17 minutes of normal time left on the clock, United, suddenly, were in danger of suffering one of their most embarrassing results of the Ferguson era. While the Reds had beaten Liverpool in the build-up to the trip to Crewe, the home side, four days earlier, had lost at home to Blackpool. United should have been winning at a canter.

But after the game had gone into extra-time and the prospect of a penalty shoot-out was looming, injecting further confidence into Crewe veins, Ferguson and United were saved by 18-year-old senior debutant Kieran Lee. The right-back, who had stepped off the bench to replace David Gray four minutes after Varney's leveller, latched onto