vs

With a 2-1 win against SL Benfica in the last group outing, Manchester United FC broke their scoreless four-match sequence in the competition. They welcome a LOSC Lille Métropole team who have yet to score a goal, but have conceded just one, so this game has the makings of another tight contest.

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

From UEFA.com

----------------------------VDS-------------------------

Bardsley---------Ferdinand--------Silvestre------O'Shea

Park/Ron----------Smith--------Fletcherinho--------Giggs

-------------------------Scholes--------------------------

------------------------van. Nistelrooy--------------------

Flip a coin and you'll likely come up with who'll start between Ron and Park, although I'd like to see Ron tried in the Rooney position instead of Scholes, somewhat reminiscent to his Portugal position. Let him go where he wants.

Rooney suspended.

Martin will probably make the bench again.

-----------------VDS---------------
Bardsley---Tweety-Rio-----Oshea
--Park---Fletcher----Scholes---Giggs
-------------Ronaldo-----------------
-------------------Ruud--------------

Since Roooney is suspended after all, there is no need to adopt the 4-3-3 to accomadate both Ronaldo and Roons attacking prowess, so back to the old 4-4-2. Smudger got his chance at the weekend, time for Fletcher to prove his worth and his new contract. wither that or drop scolsey but his experience is too valuable specially in Europe.

I think Scholes will play behind Ruud with Fletcher and Smith in midfield.

However I would like to see Park play in that role, he links so well with players and can also support the midfield like Rooney with Ronaldo and Giggs wide although it maybe unfair on Park changing his position. I am just so impressed with him.

I confess I am concerned that Rooney isn't playing; he has carried us at times.

I'm quite curious as to how we'll cope without Rooney. Just really want a win though, regardless of the starting eleven.

Looking forward to this one, hopefully Rossi can come on again if we can get a lead going.

We'll cope fine as long as Giggs is playing, same as the Benfica game.

im pretty confident Man U will beat Lille, you guys played well against us and imo Benfica and Man U are the 2 strongest teams in this group and we beat lille 1 - 0 so im predicting 2 - 0 win for you guys.

This game has a draw written all over it, a 0-0, or a 1-1, I really don't see a high scoreline on this one.

why would this have a draw over it?.......This is Lille. Since Benfica beat them 1-0 then by that logic we should be able to beat them as well.

Wouldn't mine that either, re: Ronaldo. So keeping Scholes out and putting Park on the right.


Giggs back for United (and some other info)

I'd love it if Giggsy scores tomorrow, being his 100th European appearance for United. But in any case, a win against Lille is what I'm hoping for.

HAHAHAHA

--------------------------------VDS-------------------------

Bardsley---------Ferdinand--------Silvestre------O'Shea

Ronaldo------------Smith-----------Scholes--------Giggs

----------------van. Nistelrooy------Rossie----------------


2-1 United, Ruud and Giggs to score. Although im still not 100% about Rossie I think he should be given a chance after his (fluke) goal at the weekend!

Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson says he's unlikely to play Giuseppe Rossi tonight against Lille.
Rossi scored on debut against Sunderland on Saturday, but Ferguson says: "I wouldn't be afraid to play the boy.

"He is a fantastic talent but I think we will need more experience tomorrow."

giggs--------rvn--------park
fletcher----smith------scholes
o'shea---rio---silvestre---bardsley

howard
pique
richardson
ronaldo
miller
rossi
saha

2-0 united GO REDS!!!

-----------------------VDS-----------------------

Bardsley------Rio--------Silvestre-------O'Shea--

Ronaldo----Fletcher------Smith--------Giggs----

---------------Scholes------------------------------

----------------------------Ruud--------------------

I expect a comfortable win maybe 2-0 or 3-0, Im sure we can cope without Rooney to be fair because no disrespect to Lille but i dont expect them to cause us many problems.

i agree with you on that...

concerning the benefica supporter who mentioned that man utd should easily beat lille since you beat lille 1-0, would just like to remind you that the goal was scored in the 93rd minute... that game was incredibly even and both teams should have left the field squared off... but lille didn't put their chanes in the back of the net and they paid for it... just warning you guys, as a psg fan and seeing psg win 2-1 against lille, the score could have easily been the other way around... if they play at their potential, they will be play very well... they are an incredibly young team... as a resulf of this, compared to man utd, they are very inexperienced which might lead them to lose this match... otherwise, i see a good game ahead and a draw of 0-0 or 1-1 as well...

also, since lille has yet to score in CL, look for them to go out in the attack fast... puel kind of hinted at that i think, so we'll see what happens...

bon match...

This is a good lineup and i think it is the one that will be used This is a must win for us too have a grip at the table , we are back to fprm though we will miss rooney alot and i hope Ronaldo should get nack his performance today

I expect us to win tonight match although Lille will put up a fight, sure we miss Rooney, but we still have Giggsy and Ruud to deliver the good for us, hopefully Ronaldo step up his performances. He been poor for us the last 2 month or so.

------------------------VDS-------------------------

Bardsley-----Ferdinand-----Silvestre-----O'Shea

----Park-----Fletcher-----Smith-----Ronaldo-----

-----------------------------Giggs------------------

-------------------van Nistelrooy------------------


I'm pretty sure that will be the line-up.


I think we'll win 2-0, and hopefully Rossi will get some more playing time.

Confirmed team news

------------------------VDS-------------------------

Bardsley-----Ferdinand-----Silvestre-----O'Shea

----Ronaldo-----Fletcher-----Smith-----Giggs-----

-----------------------------Scholes------------------

-------------------van Nistelrooy------------------

0-0 at half time. giggs with a gem of a freekick..

Why cant Fletcher please get lost. And why are we playing 2 holding midfielders? Smith is also pathetic, did you see how he cowered out the way of that free kick while he was in the wall? I thought he was meant to be tough

JI Sung Park: we need you.

It's always going to be tough for a one man team like United when that one man isn't playing. You should have enough though, whats the price on a 94th minute deflected shot creeping in or a penalty

Unfortunately he was poor again


Park has only been with us for like 2 months and we already start to miss him when he's not on!! Maybe because he's willing to make smart passes that Ronaldo seem to be lacking this season...

Lille have been the better team. Its been very easy for them to defend against us. Id prefer Giggs and Ronaldo to stick more to the wings, and for us to up the tempo. When we get possesion, we've been slowing down the play. We're much better when we play with a high tempo.

Smith and Flecther have been easily over-run in the centre and that has to change. Without Rooney, there doesnt seem to be much of a link up between midfield and Ruud. And i worry that if it continues like this, we dont have anyone to come off the bench to really change it for us.

Im optimistic we can still take the 3 points but we're going to have to change in the second half.

Disgusting dive by Odemwinge early on, glad the ref caught that. Should have been a yellow though. And how did that Twataridis or whatever his name is guy get away with that horror tackle and then the hand all over Ruud's face?

Not a great first half, hopefully more chances to be created in the 2nd.

Fuck me, Ronaldo will have a shiner in the morning

Paul Scholes sent off.

This is the most depressing game of football ive seen for a while.

I agree with you...just shows how United miss Rooney

its so crap its funny. Its just one continuos loop.

The defenders and VDS pass it between them for a few minutes kick it high up to Ruud, who get beaten in the air, they pass it to keeper, who smacks it up too far to VDS, then he passes to ferdinand....

Yawn.

LMAO, yes indeed.

Well you can tell just how much difference Scholes makes. Machester look exactly the same with him off the field.

What did he do? I missed more than half the game.

Bahhh is all i can say about the game...not creative what so ever..., a bad game by United's standards. One thing i find funny was that the Greek defender of Lille didnt get booked all night.

Imo SAF should go back to 4-4-2, and with no doubt that Rooney will make A HUGE difference in the next game.

a shite performace. park played well for the fraction of the match he was on for. our midfield was completely overrun by lille's, too many stray passes and ruud looked invisible. and ronaldo...god , lets not go there. disinetersted as usual.

I cant beleive i ran home from class for this shite.

Is Alan Smith awake? I barely saw him break into a sprint the whole game. Hes a lazy sod.

In fact we have too many players who do nothing to impact games, Scholes included, he doesnt have the energy

simply, fergies a dickhead, if hes gonna make changes, who do it in the 82nd minute when park has next to no time to influence the play, bring on park in the 65th or so, get sum tempo into the game and we might win.

It was just flat.

Poor performance. Cant wait for Rooney to come back. We really need him. Scholes was really poor again and hopefully wont start against Tottenham.

Smith and Fletcher were also crap. John O'Shea had a nightmare, and Rio wasnt at the races.

I thought Park was great when he came on. I would have liked to have seen him a bit earlier though. Bardsley was decent again.

Then theres Ronaldo. One of his worst performances ive seen tonight. His crosses were poor, his dribbling was awful, his shooting was typically crap, and to top it all off, he starts fucking J-walking over to the corner flag to take a corner in the last minute.

Really poor today, im trying to find some positives from the game, but it is an impossible task.

Boring. Boring. And Boring.

United makes an quite easy group difficult.

The match proved how match we miss Rooney.

Dam and i had to make Ruud captain of my team in the Uefa fantasy league just 5 min before it closed !!!!

That was so frustrating to watch..United didn't play well at all...they had so many chances..I don't think O'shea played really well...his passes were horrible..and there didn't seem to be any good communication going on, on his wing..between giggs and O'shea. But w/e..we still got one more chance to beat them..

Ronaldo: One of his best strengths was his ability to keep possession and use it wisely. For the past two seasons i have marveled at his ability and ball control, he rarely loses the ball, whenever trapped by 2-3 defenders he would use skill to force a foul or pass to a teammate. I think he lost 80% of his own possession today, many times that led to dangerous counter attacks from Lille.

And what was the gaffer playing for? Insisting on keeping his 3 man midfield, which was overrun anyways, why not take a chance and put pressure on Lille. Technically they suck, they made some very amateur mistakes today and we shouldn't have played this cautious crap again.

Please Fergie please..... tell us this was all part of your plan to rest Park for the upcoming Spurs match, and you already have the group stages of CL in your pocket all along.... (makes some sense, Park vs Lee is gooing to sell big )

i hate that fucking 4-5-1 system and we need a quality centre midfielder IMO. there is no real engine no life in our midfield and we played so slow speed. oh yeah and BTW ronaldo off park in. he starts to frustrate me he always loses the ball and he did have a good run on the right side of midfield he got pass 2 players with his speed and then he waits and waits walks to the byline and has 3 defenders around. he just needs to speed them all away like giggsys doing

very disappointed....

However Park made some difference at second half.

Let see how Rooney is going to make difference next game.

I never expected we were going to tie against them at OT

we really didnt have that many chances, everytime we got the ball we either lost it in possession or just wasted it. I thought we'd be able to run it even without Rooney if Giggys and Ronaldo played upto par but fuck me, was I wrong.

The inly posostive I can find from the match is that Park played well, as did Bardsley except he isnt reall yinvolved in the attacking moves like Gazza was. Part from, we were dismal at best.

that and Park was captain for the last 10

Giggs had a shit game. What are you talking about? Ronaldo caused more trouble to the defenders then Giggs did. Having 2-3 players in your face as soon as you touch the ball isnt easy to deal with. Esp with all the elbows to the face that Ronaldo was copping.

this game was a snoozefest, chances were few and far between Lille plays very tight.

that was dire, fecking awful.

What the **** is Fergie playing at? Bringing Park on with 8 minutes to go...What the **** is the point of that? Rossi and Blake scoring goals for fun in the reserves yet he keeps them on the bench.

The ref was terrible tonight, did not let the game go on, this is a contact sport yet every little challenge he pulled up for. FIVE elbows and not one of them got a yellow card. Bardsley i think it was pulled off a great challenge yet he gave it as a free kick.

i meant ronaldo should pass the players like giggsy is usually doing with his speed. ronaldo got great speed and ballcontrol to run the wing up and down