Why Alan Hansen’s ‘you can’t win anything with kids’ line is still iconic 30 years on | OneFootball

It was 30 years ago this week that Phil Neville and Paul Scholes were among the few Manchester United players who could even bring themselves to watch Match of the Day on the opening day of the 1995-96 season. They consequently got to actually witness a piece of punditry that everyone around the training ground – and the Premier League – would be talking about the next day.

“You can’t win anything with kids,” Alan Hansen famously stated after United’s 3-1 defeat to Aston Villa, almost saying that notorious line in passing. The worst part was that many of United’s “kids” agreed with him. “Hansen just said what everyone was thinking,” Nicky Butt would later admit.

For some of the players, though, the worst words were something else. Hansen had been summing up United’s issues in that authoritative staccato style, and immediately added something that really stung. “You look at that Manchester United line-up today and Aston Villa, when they get the team sheet, it’s just going to give them a lift. It will happen every time he plays the kids.”

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By the season’s end, Manchester United had emphatically disproved Alan Hansen’s proclamation (Getty Images)

And yet, when that team sheet came through on that blazing afternoon at Villa Park, Mark Bosnich recalls that it wasn’t the names that caused a reaction. United had already sold Paul Ince, Mark Hughes and Andrei Kanchelskis without replacements, after all, which had created weeks of debate. Villa were primed for that. The absences of Ryan Giggs, Steve Bruce, Andy Cole and – notably – suspended kung fu enthusiast Eric Cantona meanwhile further forced Alex Ferguson’s hand. He had to throw most of the kids in. He didn't have to set them up in the way he did, though.

“The biggest thing that stood out was they started with three at the back,” Villa goalkeeper Bosnich reveals. Gary Neville, Gary Pallister and Paul Parker were the centre-halves, with Phil Neville and Denis Irwin as wing-backs. The formation was fashionable at the time, but Ferguson had never really played it before, and barely played it afterwards. For a reason.

Villa manager Brian Little was meanwhile one of the best-known practitioners of 5-3-2 and, on receiving the team sheet, he immediately went over to assistants Allan Evans and John Gregory to reshape his own team. “They were very astute tactically and it was about figuring out where the space was,” Bosnich explains.

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Man United struggled on that opening day against Aston Villa (PA)

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Talisman Eric Cantona (centre, in cap) was suspended and watched from the stands as United went down 3-1 to Villa (PA)

Villa had gone on the kind of spending spree that United didn’t in the summer of 1995, bringing in Gareth Southgate, Mark Draper and club record signing Savo Milosevic. The difference initially told. Emphatically.

“We cut them to ribbons,” Bosnich says.

By the 37th minute, Villa were 3-0 up against England’s dominant team, with Ian Taylor, Draper and Dwight Yorke all scoring. The ease of Draper’s goal, amid all the space that Little imagined, seemed to reflect the scale of what was happening. Was an era already ending? Missing out on the double in 1994-95 had cast a gloom over United that got worse with the departure of stars, but no one expected this.

The shock was only sharpened by the notification of each goal. BBC Radio 5 Live and teletext were the only sources of information for a 3pm kick-off in a different media world. People couldn't see how it was developing. United’s kits even added to the colour of the day, so to speak.

“I remember noticing the grey shirts,” Bosnich says. “Horrible… well, they weren’t horrible for us that day!”

Villa, a burgeoning side themselves, were sparkling.

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Aston Villa’s club record signing Savo Milosevic was stretchered off in the second half but that didn’t slow Villa (Getty Images)

“We were cutting them open because they weren’t quite sure who would come short, who would stay back, and they just got swamped,” Bosnich adds.

Parker remembers looking around at famous teammates who now just “weren’t there”. United's backline was instead all over the place. “I can remember the dressing room at half-time, the boss wasn’t happy,” Parker laughs.

Ferguson acted. A young David Beckham came on for Phil Neville and United switched to a 4-4-2.

“It clicked for them,” admits Bosnich. “The second half was completely different. I don’t want to blow my own trumpet but I was very busy. We were hanging on.”

Beckham scored a deflected late strike to soften the score, and perhaps give a signal. Bosnich told the press afterwards to “have faith” because he had seen “something very different” in the second half, something “outstanding”. The goalkeeper had the benefit of knowing those players from his time in United’s youth teams from the ages of 16 to 19. Ferguson, of course, knew better than anyone.

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Alex Ferguson knew just how good those ‘kids’ could go on to be (PA)

Very few on the outside did, which was why Hansen’s words so chimed. What is often forgotten, though, is that this historic piece of punditry was actually very measured.

Hansen also said: “I think they’ve got problems, I wouldn’t say they’ve got major problems.”

Senior players were to come back. It’s partly why Hansen was right. The kids were balanced by “men” – to use Roy Keane’s word – like the Irishman himself, Pallister, Bruce, Cantona and Peter Schmeichel. Phil Neville admitted that such experience later “carried” them.

Hansen’s words would also drive the players. “You want to shove it right back,” Parker says.

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Hansen (front left) was a key member of the BBC’s football coverage for many years (PA)

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But his proclamation in August 1995 will live on in infamy (PA)

Even Ferguson didn’t feel the need to mention Hansen after that Saturday. He knew the players were hurting, so reasserted his profound trust. United won the next five in a row, just before Cantona’s return. The mercurial Frenchman would eventually help secure a league and cup double by the end of the season.

There are other resonances from that day beyond Hansen’s little lesson. The Scot later admitted to the Daily Telegraph that it just occurred to him in the moment to flip Bob Paisley’s old maxim, that “experience is everything”.

“What I meant to say is: ‘you can’t win everything with kids’!” Hansen still laughed that the line “made him”.

It also made for one of the great football stories, in a way that’s arguably impossible for a piece of punditry now. Match of the Day was then the flagship programme, and almost literally the only show in town. This was old TV power. Bosnich, now a pundit himself for Australia’s Stan Sport, laughs that "it would have gone viral today… it has gone viral!”

While that’s obviously true, it would likely be just one more signal amid the noise. Social media makes many in the game’s ecosystem keen to utter outlandish opinions, just to get a reaction. There’s been a strange reversal as media has proliferated. Single lines don’t have that same impact, or context.

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A young Paul Scholes would go on to be a key part of Man United’s future (PA)

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The return of Cantona soon after also changed things (PA)

You only have to look at how Hansen’s own line still resonates 30 years on. It’s also relevant in a different way, given it involves another reversal. While Hansen was indeed partly right at the time, and that United were a “one-off”, his comment is absolutely not true for the modern game.

The total domination of pressing in football tactics necessitates energy, while an increasingly systemised sport requires malleability, both of which are better delivered by young talent. The most expensive players in the transfer market are consequently those in their early twenties, with average ages of key players dropping across the game.

In that 1995-96 season, for example, the average age of Premier League squads was 26.3 years. For Friday night’s 2025-26 season start, the average 25.7. Managers, like Ferguson then, favour youthful brio.