Over a fortnight ago the Champions League draw was held. At the end of the day when the groups were revealed Manchester city got put into the group of the death alongside Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid whilst Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal got favorable groups which should see them move onto move on to the next round.

United are paired in Group H with SC Barga, CFR Cluj 1907, and Turkish giants Galatasaray. In this group there are 2 current Domestic champions in  Galatasaray and Cluj, and although they are champions of their leagues, their leagues are not as good as the Barclays Premier League or Liga Sagres.

That should mean that United and Braga should qualify from the group quite easily. However this might not happen because last year of course United were in what looked like a fairly straight-forward group with Basel, Benfica and Otelul Galati and finished third going out at the expense of the Swiss side.

However with the additions of Robin van Persie and Shinji Kagawa made, and with the wounds of last season’s European campaign still fresh in Sir Alex Ferguson’s mind, you just cannot see United failing to get out of the group this time round.

When one looks at Braga they are very much a team inexperienced at Champions League level. Galatasary are a young, hungry and ready team looking to show that they belong at this level which leaves only Cluij. The Romanians will be the whipping boys in the division. They are a team nobody really knows much about and probably won’t know too much about after the group stage to be honest.

In the end I think United will top the group with Braga going through as runners-up. Expect United to score plenty of goals throughout this group-stage and go into the Last 16 in the competition fully confident of going far in the competition.

By Harold Hershman