After beating Aston Villa away last weekend, Sir Alex Ferguson is confident Man United players will have no problem to win their final decider game against FC Basel in Switzerland next Wednesday and clinch a place in the knockout stage of this season UEFA Champions League.
“Our form away from home in Europe over the last three or four years has been fantastic,” he explained at his press conference for the Sunday papers. “We’ve really done well and it needs to be that kind of performance on Wednesday.
“The only advantage is they do need to win and they have to try to beat us. We’ve always kept good possession of the ball and made that a dominating factor of our game. It can take the temperature out of the game.
“We went to Besiktas and Bursaspor and the noise was incredible, but you can kill that with good possession of the ball and the concentration levels have been really terrific. You need that in these games.”
Although Javier Hernandez and Dimitar Berbatov are out due to injury, the comeback of Danny Welbeck will give an extra option to United squad traveling to Switzerland. I think we played very well at Villa Park with a new formation and tactic that worked well. It seems Fergie found a temporary solution for United’s problem in the middle by partnering Michael Carrick with Phill Jones and both did fantastically. Although Carrick is not available due to suspension, Phill Jones may still starts in the middle with either Darren Fletcher or Ryan Giggs.
“Jones is a natural centre back but he’s so versatile he can play in midfield.” Ferguson said.
“We played him there because we don’t have Michael Carrick for Wednesday because he’s suspended and we have to look at options.
“We’ve also got Darren Fletcher available and we didn’t want to use Ryan Giggs against Villa because of the importance of Wednesday.”
Will United win at St. Jakob Park?