by Adeniyi Abdul

Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has ruled out any possibility of the club suffering a similar Champions League fate as last year where the team was eliminated from the competition at the earliest stage. The club had reached the final of the competition in three of the previous four editions and had been expected to dominate their group but lost out due to their performance in a match against Swiss team Basel.

“That definitely won’t happen next season.: Fergie said, admitting that the loss was due to playing youngsters in the group stages. “There’s no chance of that. Over the last few years, we’ve used the group stage as an opportunity to play the youngsters. Last season it backfired on us.”

“We changed the team too much. We won’t be doing that this season.”

“I just think we were careless” he continued. “The killer was the game against Basel at home [which ended 3-3]. We could have been 5-1 up at half-time but were really careless in that game.”

“We were unlucky against Benfica at home because we played well, but that Basel game was a real killer for us. They were just an ordinary team and they showed that when they played Bayern Munich.”

“They were lucky against Bayern at home [Basel won 1-0 in the first leg of their last-16 tie] and they were lucky against us also. Bayern battered them [winning the second leg 7-0].”