Manchester United Preview

By Mark Heys
March 18 2008

It's another local derby for Bolton Wanderers on Wednesday night as they make the short journey down the road to Manchester to take on league leaders Manchester United in a top versus bottom clash at Old Trafford.

Bolton's defeat at Wigan Athletic on Sunday leaves them stuck in the bottom three whilst United just managed to scrape past Derby County on the same weekend to keep their noses in front in the title race.

The Red Devils are understandably a strong unit on their home soil but defeats for them against Manchester City and Portsmouth in recent times will give the Wanderers some encouragement.

When the two sides last met back in November a Nicolas Anelka goal gave Bolton their first home win over United in 29 years to cap off a good first month in charge for manager Gary Megson.

Megson has seen his side dip in form since the turn of the year, they are on the back of a run of four straight Premier League defeats and last week went out of Europe against Sporting Lisbon.

United on the other hand still have European aspirations with a Champions League game with Roma to come and important fixtures against the likes of Liverpool and Chelsea before the season is out.

Wanderers will be without their long serving goalkeeper Jussi Jaaskelainen for the rest of the season as the Finnish international has a back injury.

Midfielder Tamir Cohen and defender Gary Cahill both withdrew early from the Wigan game with injury but they should be able to play in midweek.

Sir Alex Ferguson has a goalkeeping dilemma of his very own as Manchester United number one Edwin Van Der Sar is still troubled with a groin problem so either Ben Foster or Tomasz Kuszczak will take the place of the big Dutchman.

Mikael Silvestre (knee) is still a way off making a first team return but the Frenchman will play for the reserves this week after stepping up his training.

This fixture is important in shaping the title and relegation issues, a win for Bolton would pull them out of the bottom three and up to 15th, whilst victory for United would put them three points ahead of their nearest challengers Arsenal.

LAST TIME WE MET:

24/11/2007 BOLTON WANDERERS 1 (Anelka) MANCHESTER UNITED 0

BOLTON: Jussi Jaaskelainen, Nicky Hunt, Andy O'Brien, Abdoulaye Meite, Ricardo Gardner, Danny Guthrie (Christian Wilhelmsson), Ivan Campo, Kevin Nolan (Gavin McCann), Kevin Davies (Gary Speed), Nicolas Anelka, El-Hadji Diouf

SUBS NOT USED: Lubomir Michalik, Ali Al-Habsi (GK)

UNITED: Edwin Van Der Sar, Wes Brown (John O'Shea), Rio Ferdinand, Gerard Pique (Anderson), Patrice Evra, Nani, Owen Hargreaves, Michael Carrick, Ryan Giggs, Carlos Tevez, Louis Saha

SUBS NOT USED: Darren Fletcher, Chris Eagles, Tomasz Kuszczak (GK)

PLAYED FOR BOTH:

John Ball, Peter Barnes, Peter Beardsley, Wyn Davies, Tony Dunne, Quinton Fortune, Alan Gowling, Brian Kidd, Harry McShane, Willie Morgan, John O’Kane, Bill Wrigglesworth

DID YOU KNOW:

Veteran midfielder Gary Speed has been the Bolton goalscorer on their last two visits to Old Trafford.

Current Bolton coach Archie Knox was assistant manager at United between 1986 and 1991.

Wanderers manager Gary Megson brought United keeper Tomasz Kuszczak to England when manager of West Bromwich Albion.

The father of United midfielder Owen Hargreaves was born in Bolton and is a former junior player at the club.