Champions League: Rare start for Solskjaer

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer will make only his fourth start of the season for Manchester United against Lille tomorrow as reward for his supersub heroics.

With United having already qualified for the Champions League second phase, Sir Alex Ferguson will rest Ruud van Nistelrooy and play Solskjaer.

It will be Solskjaer’s first start in Europe this season and the least he deserves after coming off the bench to score against Olympiakos last week and then Leeds on Saturday.

Ferguson said: ‘‘He’s a fantastic footballer and he will play. In that kind of goalscoring form, he is phenomenal.’’

Solskjaer’s inclusion will be one of a number of changes made by Ferguson. In addition to van Nistelrooy, Gary Neville, Wes Brown, Ryan Giggs, Fabien Barthez, Roy Keane and Juan Sebastian Veron failed to make the trip.

Neville has a thigh injury, Brown a knee problem, Giggs a tight hamstring, Barthez an ear infection and Keane his knee injury, while Ferguson wants to rest Veron.

In their places, Ferguson has brought youngsters such as Michael Stewart, John O’Shea and Bojan Djordjic to northern France.

Although Ferguson sees the game as an opportunity to rotate his vast squad with one eye on the weekend clash with Liverpool, that does not lessen his desire to win.

The United manager is anxious to beat Lille, who play their Champions League games in Lens’ Stade Felix-Bollaert, to prove that the Reds can win away from home in Europe.

‘‘We can go to Lille and enjoy it without having the nail-biting anxiety of having to win, or worse still, be dependent on someone else doing you a favour,’’ he said.

‘‘Hopefully we can get a victory because after our win at Olympiakos I want to get a sequence of away victories going so that people will know we can win away from home.

‘‘There have been doubts about us and our away form has not been great since winning the European Cup two years ago.

‘‘We had an important win against Olympiakos and we want to follow that up with a good win against Lille.’’

United could also finish top of Group G if they achieve a better result than leaders Deportivo La Coruna, who face Olympiakos in Athens in their final game.

That would be the icing on the cake for Ferguson and he said: ‘‘I don’t really think it matters that much at this stage, but winning your group is still an important issue and we want to do that.

‘‘Deportivo go to Olympiakos, which is never an easy place to go to, so hopefully we can finish top of the group.’’

If United do finish first they would then be among the top eight seeds for Friday’s draw for the second group phase.

That means they would be drawn against one group winner and two runners-up in the next phase.