Soccer betting: EPL match pits Man U at Aston Villa

According to RTE Sport, “Alex Ferguson is preparing to send young strikers Federico Macheda and Mame Biram Diouf out on loan in January after being concerned at how their fitness levels compared to the Crystal Palace players in midweek.”

The Manchester United boss believes there is a “big problem” with the lack of real competitive football in the reserves league and that loan spells may be the answer.

Palace beat a second-string United side in the Carling Cup quarter-finals and Ferguson said: “The problem is the type of reserve league we have now, it’s really a youth league, and that is a big problem.

“It [the defeat] bothers me in the sense that the level of training we do was let down.

“For us it was Rafael’s first game, Darron Gibson’s first game, Mame Diouf’s only played four games this season, Macheda only his third game.

“That’s not enough football to play in the quarter-final of a League Cup I’m afraid.

“That caught us and I was surprised of the level of fitness of Crystal Palace against us.

“In terms of match play we were certainly short.”

Asked about the players going out on loan he added: “It works well for all young players to get game time and that’s what we are looking at for Macheda and Diouf, they need game time, there is no question about that. Every young players wants to play and we have to give them that opportunity.”

Ferguson will return to his core first-team squad for today’s tea-time kick-off at Aston Villa but United will be without Dimitar Berbatov (ankle) and Brazilian twins Rafael and Fabio da Silva – who also picked up knocks against Palace.

Danny Welbeck is still a doubt with a muscle strain while Anderson (knee), Michael Owen (thigh) and Tom Cleverley (ankle) are longer-term absentees.

Prediction: Manchester United  2-0  Aston Villa

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