Manchester United host Benfica tomorrow night on the verge of clinching passage into the knockout round of UEFA Champions League. A victory tomorrow night would all but assure advancing beyond the group stages, and of course, you want to wrap that up as quickly as you can.
In sports, you never want to drift into any elimination competition through the back door. You want to go in full steam ahead with momentum. It’s not just getting there; how you get there matters.
Here’s what United Manager Jose Mourinho had to say about the Halloween clash: “Our aim tomorrow is to qualify. Ten points would be OK to qualify but our main aim is to qualify first in the group.”
“The statistics are what they are but Basel have had good results against CSKA and Benfica, a draw is not bad, but Benfica will give us a difficult match.
“They have their own ambition and pride and they will try to win, we just want to get to the last 16 by finishing first in the group.”
In his prematch news conference, Mourinho hinted at the possibility of playing both Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial at the same time in this game.
“We played Marcus and Anthony together in Swansea one week ago,” Mourinho explained. “So yes they can play together, so that’s no problem, what we cannot do is play with 12 and we cannot play with everybody at the same time, but we did.”
“So we can repeat against Benfica or repeat in any other match, nobody here thinks about any other match than Benfica, nobody here thinks about Chelsea, so it’s Benfica, Champions League and only Champions League.”
Without further ado here is The Sports Bank’s MUFC Starting XI Prediction:
Marcus Rashford
Anthony Martial Henrikh Mkhitaryan Juan Mata
Nemanja Matic Ander Herrera
Matteo Darmian Phil Jones Chris Smalling Antonio Valencia
David de Gea
Odds via Sky Bet: United 1/3, Benfica 9/1, draw 19/5
Injury Report: go to this link
Prediction: United 2, Benfica 0
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now and Minute Media. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and Chicago Now.
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