Giggs gauges Porto prospects

uefa.com's regular UEFA Champions League diarist Ryan Giggs has not been enjoying an enormous amount of success in the Premiership with Manchester United FC in recent weeks. However, with a trip to Portugal in the Champions League, the Welshman is confident that his side's luck will turn.

By Ryan Giggs

I know that we're not firing on all cylinders in the Premiership at the moment but we're still joint favourites to win the Champions League and I'm not really surprised about that because our European form has been good in recent seasons. Playing in Europe is different to the domestic game and we hope to take the confidence we've got from our European games so far this season into our tie against FC Porto on Wednesday.

Winning intentions
At United we know what it takes to win the Champions League, but we will need to improve on our recent performances if we are to knock Porto out. Porto are unbeaten in their own league and will be flying high, but we still believe we can go to the Das Antas stadium on Wednesday and win.

Deco threat
Portuguese players are always confident on the ball and technically very good, but in Deco, Porto have a player who stands out. He's an excellent player and all of the best moves seem to go through him. Deco has the ability to turn a match and to pick out a killer pass and we need to look after him fairly closely on Wednesday.

Profligate shooting
We've been letting a lot of goals in recently and we need to do better because in Europe we'll get punished. We need to be more solid as a team. We are up against the best players and best teams in Europe now and every United player has to be on his game. We need to create plenty of chances and make sure we take them in Portugal because we missed a lot at the weekend against Leeds United AFC, which is unusual for us.

Great chance
Defensively I don't think we have too much to worry about. Our record has been very good in Europe this season and the only team that have scored against us in the group phase were VfB Stuttgart. So if we can take that form into this year and start where we left off then we've got a great chance of reaching the final stages of the competition.

Ups and downs
It is of course a blow that Mikaël Silvestre will be out of the squad with an ankle injury and losing Rio Ferdinand for the latter part of our Champions League campaign was also disappointing because he had been playing so well. But we do have Wes Brown back now and our strike force has been strengthened with the addition of Louis Saha.

Bright prospect
In the short time Louis has been at Old Trafford he has already developed a great partnership with Ruud van Nistelrooij and his game is set up to do well in Europe too. He's a confident lad and the kind of player that can worry Europe's best teams with his power and pace. Louis scored his debut goal for France last week and so, with all the other players around him, it looks like we've got a player with plenty of goals in him for the future.

Ryan Giggs' personal website is at www.icons.com