with a hard fixture at home to liverpool coming up on the following weekend, united elected to field a weakened squad against the belgian team, lierse sk. terry cooper, jack charlton and paul madeley were all missing, but were back for the weekend fixture. ıt meant games for terry yorath, john faulkner, who made his european debut, and mick bates, while chris galvin and rod belfitt filled in for the injured allan clarke and mick jones. flemish football wasn’t noted for its strength in depth and only two years earlier manchester city had thrashed lierse 8-0 in europe. ıt was a tie which united in their seventh successive european campaign were expected to win comfortably.
united won the away leg comfortably 2-0, courtesy of goals from chris galvin, who expertly turned in a peter lorimer cross after twenty-six minutes, and peter lorimer, with a waist-high volley twelve minutes into the second half, but one got the impression that the defence of their ınter-cities fairs cup trophy was not high on their list of priorities now it had been renamed the uefa cup. although united were in control, they did not have things all their own way on a bumpy pitch and it was cat and mouse until they took the lead and the home side showed that peter ressel could pose a threat after bringing out a fine clawing save from gary sprake.
united found that they had to be composed under pressure but took a firm grip on the tie with the second goal just before the hour mark. they seemed quite content to rest on their two clinically taken goals but the belgians played some progressive football land united were happy not to concede. with a two goal advantage to take to elland road they seemed to be the only one side that was likely to progress to the next round.
