After Anthony Martial's late winner against Tottenham, Manchester United will hope to continue their winning form at Old Trafford against Benfica. With three wins out of three in the Champions League group stages, a win against Benfica would secure United's place in the knockout stages of the UCL. Despite not putting in the best performance on Saturday, we will be hoping to get back to our stunning best and perform like we did before the international break.
Our last game against Benfica a fortnight ago ended with a 1-0 win with Marcus Rashford grabbing the winner with a mistake from the young goalkeeper Mile Svilar. The young 18 year old looked nervous all game and Marcus Rashford kept on exploiting that. However, in all honesty, I am not sure if we deserved to win the game. The performance was shocking. A similar performance will be unacceptable.
When the draw was made, Benfica were the team expected to be finishing 2nd in the group. However, they have been dreadful so far. They opened their UCL campaign with a 2-1 loss at home to CSKA Moscow, and then managed to get annihilated 5-0 by Basel. Their performance did improve when the hosted Manchester United, however it was not enough to take them off 4th place and on 0 points.
Mourinho remains without Paul Pogba and Marouane Fellaini in midfield but the return of Michael Carrick should ease Mourinho's injury problems. Meanwhile, Marcos Rojo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic continue their rehab as they both look set to return over the Christmas period. With the fixture against Chelsea coming up on Sunday, Mourinho might look to shuffle his squad and rest some of the key players.
One player which needs to start is Romelu Lukaku. After getting off to a flying start this season, the goals have started to dry up for the Belgian. However, although he hasn't been the one putting the ball in the back of the next, he has been assisting and contributing to the team. Many fans have started having doubts about our new signing but I am sure that he will prove his class and continue to shine for us.
Predicted line-up: De Gea, Darmian, Lindelof, Tuanzebe, Blind, Carrick, Matic, Lingard, Mata, Martial, Lukaku
I am going for a 3-0 win for Manchester United. Lets hope for a good performance, and most importantly, a win to send us through to the knockout stages of the Champions League!
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