Given the draw in the first leg, Manchester United can certainly consider themselves to be in pole position to go through. With the Old Trafford faithful behind them and backing them, they’ll be hoping to provide a knock-out blow to a Barcelona side who haven’t suffered defeat since losing to Bayern Munich in October.

However, there’s good reason to think they could just do that. Xavi faces a selection headache in midfield with none of his usual starting three available and with a LaLiga title race on his hands and a Copa del Rey semi-final against Real Madrid coming up, he’s unlikely to rush back captain Sergio Busquets.

Away from home, the Catalan side aren’t as robust defensively and Manchester United already exposed their defence at Camp Nou with Marcus Rashford’s pace causing problems. With a fresh midfield able to win the midfield battle too, that could tip this encounter in favour of the Red Devils.

Back in the summer, Manchester United wanted to bring Frenkie de Jong to Old Trafford. This Thursday, they’ll finally see the Dutchman playing at their ground, and everything is set up for him to have a busy game.

The fact that Gavi is suspended, that Pedri is ruled out injured and that Sergio Busquets is a doubt means that the onus will be on De Jong to make things happen in Barça’s midfield. He is the only regular starting midfielder who is available and 100 percent fit, so he is going to see a lot of the ball and we can expect him to make a lot of passes.

Even when all his talented midfield colleagues have been playing, De Jong has still managed to average 72.4 attempted passes and 64.5 completed passes per 90 minutes this season. If he can achieve those numbers when having to share the ball with Pedri, Gavi and Busquets, imagine how involved he’ll be when he is the leader of the midfield on Thursday night.

Freshly available after serving a three-match ban domestically, midfielder Casemiro will come up against his arch nemesis Barcelona with a point to prove against the team who sat on the other side of the Clásico divide for much of his career.

It’s uncertain whether Erik Ten Hag will go with Marcel Sabitzer or Fred alongside him in the midfield, or even both, but the weight of the destruction of Barcelona’s play will almost certainly fall upon the Brazilian’s shoulders.

With a season average of 1.91 fouls per 90 for Manchester United since joining the club in the summer, that is lower than his average number of fouls in matches against Barcelona which stands at 2.06 per 90 based upon his last 15 meetings with the Culés dating back over the past five seasons.

Despite the fact that Manchester United are looking more likely to come out on top in this match-up, Barcelona will not go down without a fight. Primarily, that’s down to the fact that they have scored in their last 19 matches in a row.

Leading the charge once again will be Robert Lewandowski. The Polish international has had a shot on target in 13 consecutive matches for Barcelona, a run dating all the way back to October, and has only failed to have an attempt on target twice in a Barcelona shirt since he joined the club in the summer.

With six shots on target in his last three games against Villarreal, Manchester United and Cádiz, including one on target in the first leg of this knock-out tie, his accuracy rate sits at 72.3% over that period. With that kind of form in front of goal, he is good value to register another shot on target at 1.3.