When Sir Alex Ferguson came to know that Jonny Evans was going to West Bromwich Albion, he found it hard to believe as he had thought that the Irish defender’s career would finish at Old Trafford or if not that, he would leave only one or two seasons before retiring, but, much to the surprise of the legendary coach, Evans left with substantial amount of Football still left in him.

Sir Alex didn’t make any public statement regarding Evans’ departure, but, Michael O’Neill who coaches Evans at the international level has recently disclosed that last year when Sir Alex met him at an event organised for the coaches, the Scot told him that the decision of the United management of letting Evans go caught him by extreme surprise.

However, O’Neill reckons that one can understand why the Red Devils’ management would have made such a call. First of all, they already had two players to play in that position in the form of Ferdinand and Vidic and secondly, it was a time when Evans was having injury issues too frequently.

So keeping in mind Evans’ fitness and also the fact that because of the presence of two quality defenders in the squad already, there was not a great possibility of the team missing him, they would have considered it a fruitful deal to sell him.

As per O’Neill, a few top clubs had their eyes on Evans as well, but, again it was his fitness which they were not sure about and that’s why they didn’t push for him and he eventually found himself at West Brom which was indeed a little sad.

It’s understood that West Brom paid an amount of 6 million Pounds to United to secure the services of Evans.