Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson had to rebuild the club's successful youth system from scratch when arriving at Old Trafford in 1986.
Former scout Jimmy Murphy was key, along with Brian Kidd, now coach at Manchester City.
"It's quite true," Ferguson told the Daily Mail. "When I arrived down here I went to see Jimmy Murphy. Both Matt (Busby) and Jimmy were at stages in their careers where they had time to offer me advice.
"Jimmy was still scouting for the club and I went and had lunch with him and he expressed this great desire to see youth coming back into the club. He was a very emotional man, a great servant to the club, and I would have liked to have listened to him more over the years.
"But I went from there and got Brian Kidd more involved. He had come back to the club to work in community football but he had great local knowledge.
'He started to build good relationships with the schools in Salford and beyond. He had that respect we needed to get the kids into the club.
"I also spoke to Bobby Charlton and he agreed. Bobby would get very excited when young players started arriving at The Cliff again. And Archie Knox, my assistant at the time, would also go down and watch them. A lot of energy went into rebuilding the youth set-up."
