Manchester United vs RSC Anderlecht Match Preview And Prediction

Manchester United vs RSC Anderlecht Match Preview And Prediction

Thursday night sees the Europa League quarter-final second leg between Manchester United and Belgian club RSC Anderlecht at Old Trafford. The tie sits at 1-1 after the first leg played in Belgium last week.

United were by far the better team on the night and were left to rue a serious of missed chances as Anderlecht scored with their only shot on target with just 4 minutes left in the game. Leander Dendoncker scored Anderlecht’s equaliser after Henrikh Mkhitaryan had deservedly given the Red-Devils the lead tapping in the rebound after the keeper spilled Marcus Rashford’s shot.

Naturally the away goal is a nice cushion to have and Manchester United have a good run going at Old Trafford in Europe having kept a clean sheet in their last three European home games. The last time they had a longer run was under Sir Alex of course back in 2008. That run was a streak of 5 shut-outs which saw United go all the way to the Champions League final, where they beat Chelsea in Moscow to claim the biggest prize in club football competition.


United are coming into the game against Anderlecht on the back of a most impressive 2-0 win over Antonio Conte’s league leading Chelsea side on Sunday at Old Trafford. The team’s confidence should be at a season high as every United player delivered a 9 out of 10 performance against the Londoners with Marcus Rashford showing how lethal he can be. The win over his old club showed that Jose Mourinho still has that tactical genius in case anyone was doubting him as he picked a team which not only nullified the Chelsea attacking threat but also had enough offensively to reveal Chelsea’s weaknesses at the back. Rashford was the tormentor in chief constantly pestering Cahill, Azpilicueta and Luiz with his speed and skill.

You can see Mourinho’s men keeping a clean sheet but United will really want to beat Anderlecht convincingly so as not to leave anything to chance. In fact history is very much on Manchester United’s side as their biggest ever victory came against Anderlecht back in September 1956, when in a European Cup preliminary game the Red-Devils hammered the Belgians 10-0.

Looking even deeper at history shows that United have been victorious in their 4 most recent home games vs Belgian sides (including 3 vs Anderlecht) with United scoring 21 goals and conceding only 2. In addition Jose Mourinho has won his last 8 European games played at home as manager, with the last 5 coming this season with United of course. So history and recent form seems to indicate that United should really make it through to the semi-finals.

It will be interesting to see who Jose selects upfront as Zlatan Ibrahimovic has scored 5 goals in the Europa League this season with him banging in 4 of them at Old Trafford. Marcus Rashford of course has scored 2 goals in his last 3 games after going 9 games without a goal.

We think that the game will be close for periods of it but United will ultimately have too much for Anderlecht and we see Jose Mourinho’s men pulling off a 3-1 win on the night and a 4-2 aggregate scoreline. It seems quite plausible that the United boss will select both Ibrahimovic and Rashford with the latter being used in a wide position. Goals could very well be supplied by the ever improving Henrikh Mkhitaryan and the in-form Ander Herrera or by the mighty Zlatan and the young stud that is Marcus Rashford.

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