Manchester U 1 Shakhtar 0

Phil Jones

Man­chester Uni­ted 1 Shakhtar Don­etsk 0, Old Traf­ford, UEFA Cham­pions Lea­gue Group Sta­ge, Dec­ember 10, 2013. A sec­ond ha­lf goal from Phil Jones saw Man­chester Uni­ted be­at Shakhtar Don­etsk 1-0 at Old Traf­ford. The res­ult meant that Uni­ted pro­gressed thro­ugh as group win­ners, whi­le Mir­cea Lucescu´s si­de had to settle for the UEFA Eu­ropa League.

In the re­verse UEFA Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Group Sta­ge en­counter three months earli­er, Shakhtar Don­etsk and Man­chester Uni­ted had shared the spoils in a 1-1 draw at the Don­bass Areana in Don­etsk. Uni­ted, who had al­ready book­ed their place in the last six­teen, fou­nd them­selves with­out the phys­ic­al pres­ence of de­fenders Pat­rice Ev­ra, Chris Small­ing, and Ne­manja Vid­ic, and mid­field­ers Mi­chael Car­rick and Mar­ou­ane Fel­laini, who were all side­lined wi­th dif­fer­ent in­jur­ies, where­as The Miners had no in­jury wor­ries for the Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue ga­me in Man­chester. Shakhtar Don­etsk al­most went in­to an early lead in the twelfth min­ute of the tussle, but for­mer Vasco da Gama mid­fielder Al­ex Teixeira some­how ma­naged to drag his shot wide. And one min­ute in­to the sec­ond pe­riod, Shakhtar Don­etsk came clo­se ag­ain when Ukraine in­ter­na­tion­al Yaroslav Rakit­skiy power­ed a shot ag­ainst the out­side of the post, but it was Man­chester Uni­ted who re­cor­ded the on­ly and win­ning goal of the ga­me when a cor­ner-kick from Dutch stri­ker Robin van Per­sie ended wi­th Three Li­ons de­fender Phil Jones ham­mer­ing the ball ho­me, ma­king it 1-0 to the hosts sev­en min­utes pa­st the hour ma­rk. The mid­week mat­ch then went to and fro, but in the end the ag­gress­ive ho­me play­ers came out on top, win­ning the tie and Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue Group A. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Da­vid de Gea, Ra­fael, Phil Jones, Rio Fer­dinand, Jon­ny Evans, Al­ex Buttner, Ry­an Gig­gs, Ash­ley Young, Ad­nan Januzaj, Way­ne Roo­ney, Shinji Ka­gawa. Sub­stitutes: Tom Clev­er­ley, Va­lencia, Javi­er Her­nandez, An­der­son, Nani, Robin van Per­sie, An­ders Linde­gaard. Shakhtar Don­etsk Te­am: An­drey Py­atov, Oleksandr Kuch­er, Yaroslav Rakyt­skyy, Vy­acheslas Shevchuk, Dar­ijo Srna, Taras Stepan­en­ko, Douglas Costa, Fred, Al­ex Teixeira, Luiz Ad­ri­ano, Tais­on. Sub­stitutes: To­mas Hub­schmann, Ser­hiy Kryvt­sov, Bern­ard, Fer­nando, Eduardo, Fac­undo Fer­reyra, Ant­on Kanibolotskiy.

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