| Mo | Tu | We | Th | Fr | Sa | Su |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
Despite being without the services of Mark González and Guilherme, Juande Ramos had commented prior to the match that the Army-Men would not shy away from the attack. However both sides were highly cautious and would not risk exposing themselves to a counter thus restricting play as a box to box kind for much of the evening.
CSKA's attack, with Alan Dzagoev in support of lone striker Tomáš Necid, was unable to carve out a weakness in the visitors defending and rarely threatened in the final third of the pitch before the break. Following a modest beginning, Sir Alex Ferguson's side, who were without Ryan Giggs, Wayne Rooney, Patrice Evra, Park Ji-Sung and Darren Fletcher, began to get their footing with veteran Paul Scholes testing Igor Akinfeev from distance five minutes shy of the half-hour.
Following a few flickering attempts by Alan Dzagoev and Miloš Krasić, the match stalled towards the break and the sides went the change-rooms scoreless.
After the re-start, CSKA began to show a morsel more confidence going forward with Tomáš Necid and Alan Dzagoev threatening in the attack but both came up short and the match was still far from a wide-open affair.
After Alan Dzagoev had a goal called back with an offside call and Igor Akinfeev held back Nani's header at the hour the match slowed to the final quarter hour. Michael Owen, who had come in Paul Scholes with twenty-minutes remaining, had a solid opportunity via Antonio Valencia's provision but he was unable to close out though Manchester United was holding the attacking pulse.
With ten minutes to play in regulation Antonio Valencia drilled the ball off the cross-bar but six minutes later the Ecuadorian international made no mistake with the winning mark. Coming via Nani's deft cross from the left, Dimitar Berbatov flicked the ball to the right side of the box that Valencia out-manoeuvred Aleksey Berezutsky to send the ball in from an acute angle to give Manchester United the late 1-0 victory.
