Champions League: Manchester United plot season-saving salvo

Red Devils look to overturn deficit in Olympiakos last-16 clash .


Afp March 18, 2014
If United fail in Wednesday’s clash, an unwanted consolation of a Europa League place will be all that is left to play for. PHOTO: AFP

MANCHESTER:


Reeling from their humbling by Liverpool, Manchester United have all to play for as they return to Old Trafford on Wednesday. The hosts would need to overturn a 2-0 Champions League deficit against Olympiakos to save their otherwise wretched season.


Sunday’s 3-0 loss to Liverpool left David Moyes’s side 12 points below the top four in the Premier League and having already gone out of both domestic cups, the Champions League represents a last chance of salvation.

Notions of the club qualifying for next season’s Champions League by winning the current tournament appear fanciful, but elimination in the last-16 on Wednesday would suck all intrigue from their campaign.



Succeed, and United will take their place alongside Europe’s most glamorous sides in the quarter-finals, three years after last reaching the last-eight en route to defeat by Barcelona in the 2011 final.

Fail, and the unwanted consolation of a Europa League place will be all that is left to play for; a fraught summer of soul-searching is all to look forward to.

United were synonymous with stirring comebacks under Moyes’s predecessor, Alex Ferguson, but they require a vast improvement on the insipid showing produced against Liverpool.

Worryingly for both United’s supporters and the club’s hierarchy, the team’s performances appear to be getting worse, despite strikers Wayne Rooney and Robin van Persie both now operating at full capacity.

They offered disconcertingly little resistance in the first-leg loss to Olympiakos in Piraeus on February 25, but goalkeeper David de Gea has promised an improved showing in the return fixture.

“We know we didn’t play a good match in Greece,” the Spaniard told the UEFA website.

“They were better than us and they won. But now there is the return-leg at Old Trafford and I think that, with our fans behind us, we have to go onto the pitch and fight and attack from the first minute.

“We will give everything we have and play a lot better than we did there.”

Zenit hoping for a European miracle in Dortmund

Borussia Dortmund host Zenit St Petersburg in the second-leg of their Champions League last-16 tie on Wednesday with the Russians admitting they need a minor miracle to progress.

Last season’s runners-up Dortmund enjoyed a 4-2 win in the first-leg in St Petersburg three weeks ago and Zenit have since sacked Italian coach Luciano Spalletti.

Former Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur manager Andre Villas-Boas was named as his successor on Tuesday and will be unveiled at a press conference on Thursday.

Former Paris Saint-Germain midfielder and former Russia captain Sergei Semak will be on the touchline in Dortmund as Zenit’s interim coach.

“We want to peform with dignity in the return match with Borussia. Of course our chances are slim, but miracles sometimes happen,” said Semak ahead of the game.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 19th, 2014.

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