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"FC Basle VS Manchester United"

I rekon uniteds win against newcastle will lift them past basle easily. But then they'll get smashed by liverpool on sunday!

Yes, O'Shea or Brown could bring a bit of control at the back - but blanc has been terrific in Europe - theres no subsitute for this experiance, both wes and john are relativly new to European style defending, both are still young and have alot to learn.

Also everyone tends to forget thats its the midfield that is required to protect the back four - who in our midfield at the moment can do this? we have no real ball winners in there at them moment - we are temporarily have to make do with Scholes and Fortune grafting for the ball (both whom are attackers and fortune is not the most gifted) whilst Giggs and Veron create opportunitys for others.

This is alright tenporarily but if we face Juve, Deportivo et al like this, we will get punished.

True - he's a half-decent full-back and sometimes an OK wide-midfield player. But he's nothing more than that.

Well, Phil's career was always lesser than his brother after he spent a long time out with glandular fever.

It seems that after that, Gary got better as a player, but Phil didn't. I still rate him as a decent player though, as long as he isn't put in the centre of midfield.

The centre of anywhere in fact.

O'Shea's a strong player, and I'd imagine he has a pretty strong character inside of him. Maybe he could be the one to control the backline? After-all, he is Irish! ;)

But what about Barthez?? He'll always be there screaming at them anyway.
Problem is that there's no Blanc to translate his French into English.

Brown's also a strong player with a mild amount of varied-experience.
And Phil Neville may not be great, but he's been-around nearly as-long-as brother Gary.

I guess tomorrow night we find out whether Basle are actually really quite good, or if Liverpool are just crap.

We have another injury - Blanc

Therefore probabale team:

Barthez

P.Neville
O'Shea
Brown
Silvestre

Giggs
Fortune
Scholes
Veron

Solskjaer
RVN

------------

The defence is showing lack of experiance and also P.Neville - which is always a bad sign ;)

Blanc is injured, so our injuries continue to grow, there is a severe lack of maturity at the back - when Blanc limped off against newcastle, they scored twice and our defence was rocky. I just hope this doesnt happen against Basle, we need someone to take charge at the back and looking at the above who could that be?

In-terms of reputations, we should go-through easily!

But when you look at our recent form, it could still be a scrape.
Newcastle's defence wasn't all-that-great on Saturday, but we did make the most of it with all the chances we could get.

I'm confident about this game. Just as-long-as we start with 2 strikers and Veron's in the right place, we should be able to win the easier tie by 2 or 3 goals. Our defence is also looking better with Brown finally back.

Malcior wrote:
So there. Shut it

LMAO. Heh. Ahem...

dont underestimate them

well think about last season. United had an excellent winning streak and liverpool were playing poor. But what happend? 1-0. So there. Shut it