Bursaspor seeking home help against United

With no points and no goals from their first three UEFA Champions League matches, Bursapor will hope to break their duck when they welcome Manchester United FC to Turkey on Matchday 4.

• Bursapor's 1-0 loss at Old Trafford on 20 October left them bottom of Group C but Ertuğrul Sağlam's side will enter the return fixture at the Bursa Atatürk Stadium eager to improve on their opening home display in the competition – a 4-0 defeat by Valencia CF in September – after the subsequent, narrower losses in Glasgow and Manchester.

• United travel to Turkey with a two-point lead at the Group C summit and knowing another victory would leave them on the cusp of qualification – and their away form in Europe augurs well for their prospects.

Match background
• United have won seven of their last eight UEFA Champions League away games, most recently the 1-0 victory at Valencia on Matchday 2. Their only blip in that sequence was the last-minute defeat at FC Bayern München in last season's quarter-final, United's only loss in their last 18 away matches in the competition.

• United won 1-0 at Beşiktaş JK on their last visit to Turkey in September 2009, Paul Scholes scoring a 77th-minute winner in a UEFA Champions League group stage match.

• That was United's fourth clean sheet in five trips to Turkey which have yielded two wins, two draws and just one defeat – a 3-0 reverse at Fenerbahçe SK in the 2004/05 group stage when United had already qualified. All five of those games were in Istanbul.

• Bursaspor's only previous encounter with English opposition brought a 4-0 victory against Wimbledon FC in a UEFA Intertoto Cup tie in Brighton in June 1995. The Wimbledon side included three young players on loan from United: Michael Appleton, John O'Kane and Graeme Tomlinson.

Team ties
• Sağlam has upset English opposition before as coach of the Beşiktaş JK side who beat Liverpool FC 2-1 in Istanbul in the 2007/08 UEFA Champions League group stage – although they then lost the reverse fixture 8-0.

• Michael Owen scored past Bursaspor goalkeeper Dimitar Ivankov to help Liverpool win 4-2 at PFC Levski Sofia in a UEFA Cup third round tie in Bulgaria in March 2004.

• Owen also found the net for Liverpool in a 3-3 draw with an FC Basel 1893 side including Ivan Ergić in the 2002/03 UEFA Champions League first group stage. Owen's goal completed Liverpool's comeback from 3-0 down but the draw was still enough for Basel to advance at the Merseyside club's expense. Basel's next game was a 3-1 home loss to United in which Ergić also played.

• Ergić has also faced Aston Villa FC, Blackburn Rovers FC and Middlesbrough FC in UEFA competition. He is still seeking a first victory in England.

• Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville were part of the United side that missed out on the 1993/94 UEFA Champions League group stage after an away-goals defeat by Istanbul outfit Galatasaray AŞ in the second round – United drew 3-3 at Old Trafford, then 0-0 in Istanbul.

• Milan Stepanov was an unused substitute for FC Porto in both legs of their UEFA Champions League quarter-final defeat by United in 2008/09.

• Ali Tandoğan helped Gençlerbirliği SK defeat Blackburn in the 2003/04 UEFA Cup and featured in Beşiktaş's 2007/08 meetings with Liverpool, a 2-1 home win and a competition record 8-0 defeat at Anfield.

• He was also an unused substitute for Beşiktaş in a 2-0 home defeat by Dimitar Berbatov's Tottenham Hotspur FC in the 2006/07 UEFA Cup group stage; Berbatov scored the second goal.

• Gökçek Vederson played both legs of Fenerbahçe's 2007/08 UEFA Champions League quarter-final defeat by Chelsea FC. The next season he appeared in a 0-0 group stage draw at Arsenal FC.