United see a competitive advantage in the field of rehabilitation and fitness as crucial to their chances of continued success, particularly with City building the Etihad Campus, complete with their own medical centre, due to open for the start of the 2014-15 season.
Ferguson recalled the rudimentary nature of the medical facilities at United when he arrived in Manchester to take charge of the club 26 years ago.
"If you go back 26 years, I had a staff of eight and one physio," said Ferguson. "Now I have a staff of 40 and five physios.
"We had one ultrasound machine, but we weren't the only ones. Most clubs then were exactly the same.
"So when I arrived at United we changed that pretty quickly. We brought in [physio] Rob Swire around about 1990 and since then it's been growing and growing.
"And it needed to grow because the game has got quicker and football pitches today also present a problem in terms of injuries.
"So there has to be more attention and more bodies to deal with all the players that we have.
"At the moment I probably have 28 players in the first-team squad, maybe 13 or 14 in the reserves and then about 24 Academy players.
"That's a lot of players so therefore the need for better medical attention and numbers [of physios] is really important.
"The real progress started about 10 or 12 years ago when the need for sports science came into football.
"Since then the progress in sports science has been so important.
"I always remember, when I was at Aberdeen, telling my chairman I should have two physios. He would always say 'Why?'
"He was old-school and he knew it would cost him some money."
