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New signing Marouane Fellaini and David Moyes will prove the doubters wrong at United.

The Reds’ new assistant boss Steve Round is convinced the pair will sway early opinion and become Old Trafford successes.

And the 42-year-old should know as he tracked the Belgian midfielder as a teenager and gave the green light for him to join Everton.

Round also ditched his own ambitions to become a manager in 2008 to work under Moyes at Goodison.

The champions have come under fire after gaining just four points from their first three games – even though two of those were heavyweight contests against Chelsea at Old Trafford and at Liverpool.

The post-Sir Alex Ferguson era has attracted fierce early scrutiny. United’s bungling transfer deadline day hasn’t helped matters and fans are split on the impact that sole big money newcomer £27.5m midfield buy Fellaini will have on the title holders.

But Round, who joined Moyes’ new backroom team in July and served under him for five years at Goodison, moved to Everton just weeks before Fellaini came to the Premier League as a raw 20-year-old from Standard Liege, is certain the player will win over the sceptics.

“I am sure Marouane will settle in very quickly and be an integral part of United’s success in the future, I really do,” Steve told M.E.N. Sport.

Round had monitored the progress of Fellaini in Belgium for Middlesbrough and Newcastle before teaming up with Moyes, who was already a committed Fellaini fan.

“I had seen Marouane play because he was on the radar of a lot of clubs at that time being such a young player,” added the Reds number two.

“I had watched him for a couple of years in some of the Belgian junior teams. Then I joined Everton and within weeks I saw him again for Standard Liege against Liverpool in a Champions League qualifier. He played really well in that game. He was the number one target for David that time.

“I came back from that match and I gave him a really good report and then we signed him.

“He was a little bit raw but had a lot of the attributes you would need. Over the five years at Everton he has really established himself as a top Premier League player.

“He is a regular scorer with really good physical presence.

“When David came here he looked at the squad and thought one of the players we needed to bring in was someone with those physical attributes in the middle of midfield who could give us strength and aggression in certain games and maybe allow one or two of the others to play.

“That, coupled with his ability to score, made him feel Marouane would be a really good acquisition for United.

“When you get to work with him every day, you get to realise that technically he is excellent. His chest control is arguably one of the best in the world. You can bang the ball at him from anywhere and he will bring it down on his chest and bring others into play.

“His feet and his technique work are really good. He is aggressive and tackles. He also has great fitness stats.

“He is one of the highest runners in matches. He will regularly do over 12k a game and he can run, goodness me he can run.

“He is a lot better footballer than he gets credit for and he has good passing ability.

“He doesn’t have the same range as a Michael Carrick in his long passing but his continuity and the way he keeps the ball and short passing is very good

“When you are building a squad to compete on all fronts you don’t want every single player to be the same. You want options and differences. In a certain game it might be Tom Cleverley and Carrick in midfield, it might be Fellaini and Carrick, or Fellaini and Anderson. There are different permutations

“It has given the manager options he didn’t have before.

“Marouane was ready for this step up. He’ll fit in well with the professionalism here and relish the challenge.

“He is a 10-15 goals a season man and that is good from midfield.

“He can play number four, sat in front of the defence, he can play an eight in the centre doing box-to-box and can play a number 10 where he drops off the front man. That’s valuable when the range of games is so varied.”

Following Fergie was always going to be a task that would attract the closest of scrutiny. But Round insists Moyes can rise above any early negativity and make it a smooth and silver-lined transition.

“Without a doubt David was ready for this job,” he added. “I had five years at Everton with him and he impressed me every day. There is not a day goes by where you take your foot off the gas with him. He is 100 per cent every day with an incredible work ethic.

“He also has an incredible desire to succeed. He now has the stature and presence to move to a club like this. I really do believe he will be a big success here.

“Now I have been in this club and environment I can understand why Sir Alex and the board appointed him, to keep that continuity, work ethic, drive and feeling about the club going.

“It was very important to them and I can understand now that I have been here and lived it. They were made for each other.”

Round knew in 2008 that he was the right fit as Moyes’ sidekick after spells with Derby, Middlesbrough, England and Newcastle.

“David really impressed me from the first moment I met him,” he recalled.

“I had done one year at Newcastle and I got a call off David to say he’d like to meet me because he needed a new assistant and he said I was his number one target

“From the first minute we met I knew I was going to work for him. At that time I was at a bit of a crossroads in my career because I was starting to wonder whether it was time for me to be a manager.

“I had a couple of opportunities to have an interview for the manager’s job. But after five minutes in David’s company I knew I had to work with him. He sold me a vision and I was hooked.

“He is a terrific person with great honesty and integrity. He really knows his football stuff and he will succeed at United.”

Now read the second-part of our series getting to know Steve Round and how he missed the chance to meet Pele