Vidic boost for United

Centre-back expected to return against Villa

Last updated: 9th December 2009   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Vidic boost for United

Vidic: Set to return

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Nemanja Vidic is expected to return to Manchester United's injury-ravaged defence for Saturday's Premier League meeting with Aston Villa.

Red Devils boss Sir Alex Ferguson was forced to employ a back four of Patrice Evra, Park Ji-sung, Michael Carrick and Darren Fletcher against Wolfsburg in the UEFA Champions League on Tuesday night.

Ferguson was missing 14 senior men for the clash in Germany, eight of them defenders, with his midfield trio forced to drop back to play alongside captain for the night Evra.

The hat-trick heroics of Michael Owen fired United to a 3-1 success and top spot in Group B as the makeshift backline performed well.

Serbia international Vidic has now recovered from the illness which kept him out of the victories over Wolfsburg and West Ham and will slot back in against Villa.

"I expect Vidic to be fit and if he is available we would have him and Michael Carrick, plus Darren Fletcher and Patrice Evra," Ferguson said.

"I would be happy enough with that."

System

Ferguson also expects to have Ryan Giggs, Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov available to face Martin O'Neill's men, who have once again moved to the fringes of a top-four place.

That might mean a quick relegation back to the substitutes' bench for Owen, who marked a rare start by converting his first Champions League treble since 2003.

Ferguson is delighted with the contribution of his free transfer summer signing and admitted United's regular formation goes some way to explaining his lack of starts.

He added: "I made the point some weeks ago that his training performances have improved steadily. I have had no worries about him.

"Obviously in some games recently we have only played with one striker and Wayne Rooney has been it. Here we used a different system."