Nicky Butt has conceded that Manchester United youngster Hannibal Mejbri still has a lot of development to go through, but believes he is in a good place to realise his potential.

Manchester United agreed to pay a fee of €5m, rising to €10m, to snare the young midfielder away from Monaco last summer.  

 



The youngster fell out with Monaco and refused to sign a new contract, and Manchester United beat off competition from several big wigs to get their hands on the young Frenchman.

Mejbri started out in the club’s Under-18 squad but wasted little time before he moved up to the Under-23 side under coach Neil Wood.
 


He has also been called up to specific training sessions with the first team and Butt, the club’s head of first-team development, stressed that Manchester United would not have spent big on Mejbri if they did not believe he had the talent to warrant such a fee.



However, he stressed that he is still very young and he needs to develop both physically and improve certain areas of his game in the coming years.

But the former Manchester United midfielder feels the youngster is at a good starting point from where he can go on to realise his potential.
 

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“When you’re a young player and you get brought in for a relatively big fee from a foreign club, you’re gonna have everybody watching you, and he’s aware of that [sic]”, Butt told The Athletic.

“He’s a very good player, talent-wise, or else we wouldn’t have brought him in, so that’s a given.

“But he is still only a baby, just six months out of school. He has still got a lot of growing to do. He is a good size vertically but he needs to fill out, get stronger, and he needs to learn certain parts of his game — like they all do.

“But we’re very confident in that he’s at a really good starting point.

“He’s a very hard-working boy and hopefully, given time, and not too much pressure, he’ll get to where we want him to be.”

Manchester United scouted the youngster for more than three years and held extensive meetings with this family to sell their vision for Mejbri before signing him last summer.