Next Saturday, 21st of February 2015, Louis Van Gaal’s new Manchester United will travel to Wales to measure forces with Swansea at Liberty Stadium for round 26 of the English Premier League. The Red Devils are looking for a win in order to maintain their hopes of reaching the second place of table intact, while Swansea, who have been fairly inconsistent over the recent matches, will try to return to wins in front of their enthusiastic supporters, something that hasn’t happened since last December.

After an unbelievably lucky home win over Burnley last week, Manchester United once again experienced several difficulties to overcome the modest Preston for the FA Cup on Monday. The Red Devils put up another bland performance and allowed the League One side to somewhat control some periods of the match.

As for their league match against the Clarets last week, the Red Devils might consider themselves lucky to have gotten away with the three points in their bags, since Burnley weren’t by any means inferior to them. In fact, Manchester United need to be thankful for their goalkeeper, David de Gea, who put up another vintage performance, thus preventing Burnley from scoring one or two goals more.

The upcoming fixture against the Swans will certainly not be a walk in the park for Louis Van Gaal’s boys, who will certainly, nevertheless, try to avenge last August’s sour defeat at Old Trafford. For that particular match, the Dutch manager is not yet certain if he will be able to rely on the contribution of Robin Van Persie and Michael Carrick, who are still recovering from their respective injuries.

As for Swansea, the Welsh team has been fairly inconsistent so far this season and their recent home performances and results have also left something to be desired.

After their surprising win at Southampton, the Swans have again entered on their inconsistency spiral and got nothing better than a home draw against Sunderland and ended up defeated at the Hawthorns against West Brom.

Swansea managed to surprise Manchester United at Old Trafford back in August and immediately unleashed some ghosts of the recent past for the Red Devils’ fans; however, this time and given both sides’ recent form, the match could turn out to be completely different.

Regardless of United’s recent bland performances, they are firm favourites to win the next Saturday’s clash at Liberty Stadium.

Swansea

Stats: W-1 L-3 D-1

Recent Form - LDWLL

Manchester United

Stats: W-4 L-0 D-1

Recent Form - WWDWW

Possible Line-ups

Swansea (4-4-2) – Fabianski - Naughton - Fernandez - Ashley Williams - Taylor - Ki Sung - Sigurdsson - Dyer - Shelvey - Montero - Gomis

Manchester United (3-5-2) – De Gea - Smalling - Rojo - Evans - Valencia - Shaw - Blind - Di Maria - Januzaj - Rooney - Falcao

Prediction

Swansea 1 Manchester United 2