Year: 2013

Manchester United are just a win away from qualifying for the knockout stages of the Champions league. This could be achieved as early as in the match against Bayern Leverkusen on Wednesday. The pair of Robin van Persie and Nemanja Vidic were absent for the trip to Cardiff during the weekend.

United could only manage a 2-2 draw against the Welsh team. Manager David Moyes has revealed that he is hopeful of having the pair back into the squad for the encounter against Bayer Leverkusen. This will be a tough match given that the German team are undefeated in 13 matches at home.

Manchester United suffered the first defeat of the season at the hands of their arch rivals Liverpool. Even worse still was the fact that this defeat was suffered at Anfield, which is a place where United do not want to lose because of the bargaining rights.

This result meant that David Moyes was still searching for his first win against one of Liverpool, Arsenal, and Chelsea in his managerial career. Manchester United only managed a dull0-0 draw against Chelsea in the home match last weekend. Liverpool were extremely good from the word go and they did not take long to take the lead.

Manchester United captain Nemanja Vidic has entered into the final 12 months of his contract with the club. This has started rumours that the Serbian defender could finally be set for an exit from Old Trafford after several years of constantly being linked with a move.

The 31-year-old has just returned to pre-season after suffering numerous injury problems in the last few years. Vidic and Rio Ferdinand has been one of the best partnerships in English football over the last few years, but United have been unable to pair them together for most of the matches in the last two years.

Manchester United will be making the pre-season tour to Asia, which will also be their first pre-season tour without manager Sir Alex Ferguson at the helm after a long time.

Captain Nemanja Vidic has spoken about the delight of visiting Asia once again. This is not the first time Manchester United will be touring this region of the world. In fact, the highest concentration of Manchester United fans come from this region and the club has been able to significantly boost its revenues through shirt sales in this region. David Moyes and his men will be visiting regions like Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Australia over the next few weeks as part of their pre-season tour.

Although some of the clubs can be guilty of failing to take it as seriously as they should, most fans of Premier League clubs still value the FA Cup – and it is also still a popular choice when it comes to football betting.

Unsurprisingly most sports betting sites have Manchester United amongst the strong favourites, with odds of 4/1, and their rivals from the blue half of town are also rated strongly at 9/2 by most bookmakers. Chelsea – who have odds of 4/1 and 9/2, depending on what site you visit, are also amongst the favourites, but from a betting point of view, none of these clubs will really bring much of a return.

The Serbian defender Nemanja Vidic has been one of the important players for Manchester United over the last few seasons. He has been sorely missed by the team last year, as he missed several matches.

He has been slowly brought back to full fitness by the manager Sir Alex Ferguson this season. He is expected to play a key role in the last 16 Champions league second leg encounter against Real Madrid on Tuesday night. United come into the match after having done the first leg 1-1, thus giving them the advantage of an away goal.

Real Madrid have one of the potent attacking line-ups in Europe due to the presence of players like Karim Benzema, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Angel di Maria. Despite this, the United captain Nemanja Vidic reckons that Madrid could run out of ideas when they take on United at Old Trafford. Vidic has said that Madrid have shown a lot of weakness when it comes to creating chances against teams then defend deep and in numbers. Due to the fact that only Ronaldo is the physical player up front, there is not a lot of variation in the play for United according to Vidic. Ronaldo managed to score against his former club in the first leg with a header.

“When they play against teams who drop deep, they can have a bit of trouble because Real aren’t a team that crosses the ball a lot. If you get players behind the ball, it is difficult for them to get through and they have to shoot from distance because they don’t have many crosses. They don’t have many alternatives. They have Ronaldo, who can jump when he is in the box but he’s the only one. I don’t think the other players are good in the air,” said Vidic.

The Manchester United defender Nemanja Vidic has said that he is extremely disappointed along with his teammates not to have taken all three points from the recent match against Swansea. Manchester United could only manage a 1-1 draw with the Welsh team during the weekend.

As a result of the two dropped points, they are allowed their arch rivals Manchester City to close the gap to just four points in the league. United had a lot of opportunities in the match, but were unable to make them count due to a lot of blocks from Swansea.

Vidic has praised the display of the Welsh team who have been one of the surprise packages this season under the new manager Michael Laudrup. This was the first game Nemanja Vidic was playing from the start after more than three months. After struggling to contain the Premier league top scorer Michu during the early part of the game, Vidic regained his confidence that has made him one of the best defenders in the world. United have certainly missed the presence of the 30-year-old, who has been one of the best. United will now be facing Newcastle United in the home match on Boxing Day hoping to get back to winning ways.

“We had a few chances but you have to give Swansea credit as well. They fought well and gave everything to get a point out of the game. Overall, I think they played well, we had a few chances and were unlucky. We started the game well but in that 10 or 15-minute spell after we scored we dropped our performance and Swansea punished us with a goal,” said Vidic after the match. Chelsea’s victory over Aston Villa after the match meant that they closed the gap to the leaders to just 11 points.