Champions' League: United must produce final flourish

Will the real Manchester United now stand up and finish a potentially glorious season with a flourish in Moscow? During two legs of the semi-final against Barcelona, Sir Alex Ferguson's side may have shown admirable resolution and tenacity – a revamped defence being rewarded with two clean sheets – but the team as a whole were unrecognisable as the great adventurers of the past two years, which official Uefa statistics confirm. Possession over the two matches: Barcelona 60 per cent, United 40. Shots: Barcelona 25, United 12. On target: Barça 11, United 3. And that was from a Barcelona side who, like Arsenal, often have their supporters screaming the Catalan equivalent of "Shoot!" as Lionel Messi, Deco, Xavi and Co play their umpteenth little wall-pass just outside the penalty area.

So Paul Scholes, Carlos Tevez and Park Ji-Sung shared a distinction not merely of being among United's best players in the second game last Tuesday but of managing to record one shot on target each over the course of three hours' football. Fortunately for United and a home crowd whose decibel level reached a sustained new high for Old Trafford in the prawn-sandwich era, the one by Scholes was good enough to beat just about any goalkeeper in the world. With the whole back four even more solid than they were in the Nou Camp, United have taken the low road to the final in a manner that Liver-pool would have admired and can now only envy.

As Ryan Giggs, who is second choice to the energetic Park now but was brought on late in each leg, put it afterwards: "Overall, more than anything in semi-finals, you've got the ability, you're a good team, you have got good individuals but you need that concentration. We had it in the Nou Camp and we had it here. To go 1-0 ahead and to defend like we did and to limit Barcelona to not many chances was credit to the lads."

Having been there, with Ferguson, for the bitterly disappointing semi-final defeats of 1997(by Borussia Dortmund), 2002 (Bayer Leverkusen) and last season (Milan), the Welshman can be excused this lapse into pragmatism. Scholes was also there before, of course, only to miss out on the previous final when he was booked a mere eight minutes after coming on as a substitute in the semi-final.

"He missed out in '99 but he was a massive part that year," Giggs said. "Obviously, to score the winning goal in the semi-final this time was massive for him but I'm sure that, like the other lads, he will want to finish it off in Moscow in style."

Scholes will also insist that he should only be in the team on merit. Ferguson, surely not going soft in his old age, has twice promised him a place as a consolation for missing out in 1999, an offer to which Scholes responded with scorn in a recent interview in The Independent on Sunday: "I don't want no sympathy vote."

Merit will get him there, unquestionably, in the new deeper role that has restricted him to two goals in 30 games this season, with Michael Carrick now ahead of the impressively versatile Owen Hargreaves as the other holding midfielder. In a 4-2-3-1 formation, Park would expect to have done enough to be one of the wide players and United supporters must hope that Cristiano Ronaldo reverts to his proper position on the other flank instead of running into traffic down the centre. It was hardly a surprise that he showed up so badly in comparison to Messi over the two games, as the little Argentinian playmaker was occupying the role where he does most damage and Ronaldo was not.

The same applies to Wayne Rooney, who even at half-fitness showed in one flash at Stamford Bridge last week what he can do when given a scoring chance through the middle. If Rooney is comfortably over his hip problem by Wednesday fortnight, he would be favourite to start as the central attacker, with either Anderson or Carlos Tevez – a prodigious worker last week – behind him.

An appearance in Moscow would take Giggs beyond the club record of Sir Bobby Charlton, who has been downgraded to a mere 758 games. Not, as Giggs knows, that there is any great rush to reach that target.

"You appreciate it all a lot more because there will not be many of these nights again," he said. "After '99, I thought I was going to be involved in more of them. But now, at 34, you know you won't get so many, so you enjoy them more. You had a taste of it and you wanted a taste of it again. It's been a long time, but hopefully we can go out and make it count."

To win either the Premier League – for the 10th time – or the Champions' League would be Giggs's 17th major honour, eclipsing Liverpool's Phil Neal as the most decorated player in English football history. And the opposition standing in the way? "Chelsea have been big rivals over the past three or four years. It will be a tough game but we will be up for it. We weren't too worried to lose to them last week. We were disappointed with our first-half performance, but the way we ended the game, we were positive and we could have nicked it."

When he captained United in last season's soporific FA Cup final defeat, they were tentative and paid a heavy price with Didier Drogba's late goal. Neutrals, and members of the Anyone But Chelsea brigade, would like to see the positive emphasised this time.

Watch United against Chelsea in the final on Wednesday 21 May on ITV1, kick-off 7.45