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Manchester United were busy planning for their future on transfer deadline day.

While fans were hypnotised by the yellow ticker on Sky Sports News, hoping David Moyes might bring in a signing to remedy the short-term decline, the United manager was more concerned with sending players away.

It was done in the hope that future transfer deadline days will be much quieter.

That the young players who headed for various Football League outposts on Friday will return ready to push for a place in the first-team, removing the need to spend so heavily in two, three or five years.

There are two type of loan moves.

Anderson, Federico Macheda and Bebe will spend the rest of the season at Fiorentina, Birmingham and Paco Ferreira respectively but, barring some miraculous turnaround, their careers at Old Trafford are over.

They are stuck in a kind of football purgatory, owned by United but not wanted.

Wilfried Zaha's loan move to Cardiff is different.

Out in the cold at United, Moyes is hoping Ole Gunnar Solskjaer can give the 21-year-old the Premier League experience he cannot guarentee.

Like Zaha, Nick Powell (Wigan), Angelo Henriquez (Real Zaragoza), Marnick Vermijl (NEC Nijmegen), Tom Lawrence (Yeovil), Tom Thorpe (Birmingham), Tyler Blackett (Birmingham), Will Keane (QPR), Charni Ekangamene (Carlisle), Sam Bryne (Carlisle), Sam Johnstone (Doncaster), Jack Barmby (Hartlepool) and Jack Rudge (Torquay) have all left to find regular football.

Jesse Lingard (Birmingham), Michael Keane (Derby) and Ben Amos (Carlisle) have also spent time on loan this season.

Thorpe, already an England Under-21 international, lasted just 14 minutes of his Birmingham debut on Saturday after suffering an ankle ligament injury, a reminder that loan moves don't always work out as planned.

The mass exodus from Old Trafford is a blow to the new Under-21 Premier League, billed on it's website as a competition to 'enhance youth development and help transition players between the academy and first team'.

But United's Under-21 manager Warren Joyce said after Monday's 1-0 win over Leicester that the league 'wasn't conducive to youth development' while Moyes admitted there would have to be changes before he stopped sending young players on loan.

The under-19 UEFA Youth League has provided valuable European experience in it's first year but United have found the competition stuck between their teams at under-18 and under-21 level.

“We want to give them some experience of senior football,” said Moyes.

“They have played a lot of reserves football but will be hoping to get a game on a Saturday for a league team. A few of them will get some match practice, hopefully.

“Part of their development when they are in the youth team is making the next step to the reserves and then you want to get into the first team. But you find the jump between the reserves and first team is so big nowadays.

“The difference between an Under-21 game and a Premier League game is so big, what tends to happen is these boys like to get some games and ask, 'can we go on loan?'

“It gives us the chance to see them in league football. We have staff who watch all the games and reports are brought back on how they are doing. It is part of their development. Maybe, in time, if there was a different sort of games programme, we wouldn’t need to put players out on loan.”

United boast an impressive record of youth development.

When Tom Cleverley, Jonny Evans, Darren Fletcher, Danny Welbeck and Adnan Januzaj were chosen in the 18 to play Stoke on Saturday it was the 3,677th game in a row that at least one youth team graduate had been named in the squad (@The MUFC Academy).

It's a run dating back to October 1937, two decades before the Busby Babes.

Last month, academy manager Brian McClair said it was part of Sir Alex Ferguson's legacy.

“We are in the third generation of youth development since Sir Alex came down here from Scotland,” said McClair.

“He reinvigorated the policy that was started by Sir Matt Busby and Jimmy Murphy.

“Going back all the way to then, they understood the possibility of developing your own young players. Sir Alex did that and had unbelievable success with it.

“What we’re delighted with, and I’m sure Sir Alex would be the first to say it, is the number of players who have come through that system over the last 20-odd years who have earned and are still earning a living in football.

“So we think, as a school of football, we’re right up there with any Academy. I’m fairly confident we have more people earning a living from the game than anyone else, in terms of the pure numbers.”

Even the older players ushered out of the door on deadline day like Will Keane and Thorpe – both part of the 2011 FA Youth Cup-winning team – still have time on their side.

Both are 21 and while they haven't made big impacts as teenagers like Januzaj or even Ryan Giggs, it's not to say they won't make the grade at Old Trafford.

Cleverley is 24 but, after loan moves to Leicester, Watford and Wigan, is only really halfway through his second season as a first-team regular. Welbeck, sent on loan to Sunderland and Preston, is similar.

Not all the youngsters sent on loan last week will make it at Old Trafford. Not all of them will even forge careers in the lower leagues.

But United made a bold statement on deadline day about the future of the club. Even if it wasn't the one most fans were expecting.