Fergie: We´re going for the win

Sir Alex Ferguson wants Manchester United to win Champions League Group C and avoid the big hitters in the knock-out stages.

United top their group by three points from Valencia, but they can slip to second if they lose to the Spanish side at Old Trafford on Tuesday.

Finishing runners-up will still allow United to progress to the last 16, but would increase their chances of meeting one of the competition favourites at the first hurdle.

“Well I think the sensible approach is to avoid the bigger hitters like the Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich, all the teams are number one in their group at the moment,” Ferguson said.

“We can only do that if we do finish first in the group and that’s what we want to do.”

“It’s comforting to know we have already secured our place in the next round but I don’t want us sitting back content with just getting through.”

“We need a draw to make sure we finish above Valencia. Losing would put us level on points but we have to remember that our rivals have a better goal difference after hitting six past Bursaspor.”

“We don’t know how to play for a draw, so we will be going for it as usual.”

United may be committed to going on the front foot on Tuesday, but Ferguson is concerned that the visitors may set up to defend.

“Our history against Valencia is that it’s always been very tough games and I think it will be that way tomorrow.”

“It will be interesting to see how they set out because as we saw on Saturday night’s match with Real Madrid they were very, very compact and didn’t show a lot of positive efforts to win the match but they were very difficult to beat.”

Ferguson also revealed that injury-ravaged midfielder Owen Hargreaves was receiving specialist treatment in Munich following his abortive attempted comeback against Wolves in November.

“I think we are all concerned that he hasn’t played for over two years,” Ferguson said.

“I think we would have to be super-optimistic to think everything is going to be rosy for him in terms of him making a comeback.”

“Can he fight this? He has to.”

Ferguson has reported no fresh injuries ahead of the game against Valencia, but Michael Owen is not yet ready for a first-team return, despite returning to training last week.