Hansen's column

One thing is certain as Manchester United prepare to host Roma in the Champions League on Tuesday - they will not repeat April's 7-1 mauling.

I believe their performance that day was one of the truly great displays in European football.

But this game is all about getting the job done. United must build on their good win in Portugal over Sporting Lisbon and make a statement to the other teams in their group that they are going through.

They will want to qualify as soon as they can and all the English teams should be the same, because in the Premier League there are no easy games anymore.

When you talk about rotation and resting players, it is much easier to do that if you get qualification out of the way early.

Sir Alex Ferguson's team are not exactly flying at the minute because they are not scoring that many goals.

But they will still be in a confident frame of mind because apart from the Carling Cup defeat by Coventry when they played a weakened team, they have won their last five matches 1-0.

People say they have not got a cutting edge, but when you win five on the trot - even if they have not been convincing - it pretty much feels like things are going well.

They have bounced back well from a relatively bad start to the season and it is just a matter of time before they start converting more opportunities.

What is in their favour is that the defence is playing unbelievably well. The centre-backs Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand look the best in the Premier League, they have a great understanding.

United have plenty of ways they can play in Europe this year. They have a forward line that is inter-changeable and they can play different systems and that is a good thing to have.

You might see Sir Alex tinker a bit with formations in the group stages. You might not get it right first time, but you can experiment in the group, whereas once it becomes a knockout, if you make one mistake that could be that.

They have signed the likes of Owen Hargreaves and Carlos Tevez in the summer and the more strength in depth you have and the better the quality of player you have the more it will help you.

In the knockout stages especially, you need players to shut the door on the opposition and players who can unlock defences and in Hargreaves and Tevez they have bought that in.

It is up to Sir Alex what players he uses, but he has certainly got the personnel there.

Much is made of teams having different priorities, but you would have to ask Sir Alex whether he would want to win the Champions League more than the Premier League this season.

He will be going full throttle in both and it is great for your club when it comes to March or April if you have a chance to win those two - that is what big-time football is all about.

The big four in England will look and think that come March or April, for the revenue generated as well, if you have a reasonable chance of winning both trophies you have done something right.

For United to win the biggest prize in Europe, they must learn from where they went wrong last time.

To be fair to them, when they lost 3-0 in Milan in April they had three players coming back from injury, including Vidic, who had a nightmare.

United got off to a bad start that day but they will learn from that and they are definitely better equipped this season.

As for Roma, after their thrashing at Old Trafford in April, they will want to get two things out of this trip.

When you have had a hammering like that, the next time you go back you want to not only make sure the same thing does not happen again, but also show people that you actually are a good team.

Roma have started Serie A relatively well this season and they will be out to avenge that 7-1 reversal. The most important thing for them is to get a point from the game and help themselves qualify for the latter stages.

On paper you would think these two should go through from Group F, but funnier things have happened.

Alan Hansen was talking to Jonathan Stevenson

Source: BBC Sport