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Coming off a terribly disappointing 1-1 draw to Spartak Nalchik on Sunday, confidence is far from optimal in the capital city club. There is no way around it but the Army-Men have underachieved throughout the campaign, despite possessing a well-stocked stable of talent. After taking over from Zico, Juande Ramos enjoyed early success but the loss to Zenit and this past weekends result ended any hopes of claiming the domestic crown.
With this mind the lone hope for the year rests upon advancing to the next stage of the Champions League and given the 2-1 victory over Beşiktaş on 30 September they are well positioned to so. However any notions of driving deeper into the tournament are contingent of claiming a victory against Manchester United and Juande Ramos is likely to deploy a more aggressive tactical plan.
While once again the topic of the Luzhniki surface has drawn much of the media attention, the true issue is the need for CSKA to show significantly greater attacking intent against Sir Alex Ferguson's men or it will be a very difficult evening.
While the CSKA crusade is bolstered with five notable absences for the visitors as Ryan Giggs, Wayne Rooney, Patrice Evra, Ji-sung Park and Darren Fletcher all out of the line-up with further questions of the availability of Dimitar Berbatov and Serbian international Nemanja Vidić, Manchester United boosts a hearty stable of rich talent to draw from.
Veteran Paul Scholes plays his best on world stage and should the CSKA Sofia-product Dimitar Berbatov be unavailable, Michael Owen will step in an effort to prove he still has a strikers touch.
Juande Ramos is facing his own line-up concerns and lacking a deep bench, the loss of Mark González and Guilherme cut deep into the line-up. Without the services of the on-loan young striker from Dynamo Kyiv, Tomáš Necid will step into the starting eleven and faces a difficult test against veteran Rio Ferdinand. CSKA’s attacking vision will once again come from Alan Dzagoev and Miloš Krasić and with both rumoured to be high on the transfer wish-list of the likes of Real Madrid, the stage is set for a high energy match.
