Manchester United hope Anderson's layoff has helped him to mature

Sir Alex Ferguson has warned Anderson he needs to grow up if he is to fulfil his potential at Manchester United after the Brazilian midfielder returned to training after being involved in a car crash in Portugal last month. The 22-year-old, who has not played since rupturing cruciate ligaments in February, has spent three years at the club but has yet to justify the £18m fee United paid Porto for his considerable talent. Ferguson, however, played down the significance of the car crash. Returning from a nightclub, Anderson's car struck a wall and entered a field near Braga. Reports claimed he was unconscious and hauled from the burning Audi but the manager claimed the incident was not as bad as first feared. "I don't think the crash was as bad as everyone said," he said. "He was fine; there was no problem. You do worry about your young players every time they go out; it's like having members of your family. You have teenage boys; they go out to the disco for the first time when they are 16 or 17 years of age and you want to know what time they are coming back. That is a concern you always have with young people." Ferguson added that Anderson may have failed to impress so far as he has yet to accept the realities of the squad system at Manchester United. The midfielder was only the second Brazilian to be signed by the club and although he has performed better than the first, Kléberson, he has failed to show consistent form. He was substituted at half-time on his debut and despite having one of the most venomous shots in Ferguson's squad, it took Anderson two years to score what remains his only league goal for the club. "He has an incredible personality," the United manager said. "He loves football, he loves training. He wants to play every game and train every day. "It is a problem for me because he has not got that maturity to understand that we operate a squad here. When he does understand that, he will be a fantastic performer. "Whether we can change that mentality is difficult to say. I don't want to change it in some ways, because you do like to see someone who wants to play every minute of every day. "If you have someone with that enthusiasm, you have to be careful you don't check it to the point where he loses it and the player wants to leave. Last season he was talking about leaving because he wasn't playing in every game." Generally, Ferguson does not appreciate footballers who demand to be played – it was something that irritated him about Carlos Tévez's second season at Manchester United. He appreciated it even less when, in January, Anderson returned home to Brazil without permission and was fined two weeks' wages. There was talk of sending him on loan to Lyon but the following month he suffered his knee-ligament injury against West Ham. "He needs maturity," said Ferguson, who has seen the know-how instilled in Nani, who signed for United with Anderson in the summer of 2007. "Maybe it has been a good thing he has been injured for a spell because he can look at his situation at Manchester United calmly. That injury quelled the storm in his body. He came back to Carrington with the same enthusiasm, telling me: 'I am ready, I'm ready.' It is fantastic to see that from a young lad and he will get his opportunity." Nemanja Vidic has signed a two-year extension to his contract up to 2014.