Manchester United's 1-0 victory against Roma last night has won a place in the semi-final playing against Barcelona.

With their record-breaking 11th straight home win in the Champion’s League, United cruised through the match largely unchallenged. Leading 2-0 from the first leg, the Red’s survived a scare when Wes Brown brought down Mancini in the penalty box.

Sufficed to say, Ferguson was absolutely livid with the referee’s decision, quoted in the Sun as saying; ‘I thought that was a big decision and a bad decision’. For once in the recent list of managerial quibbles with referee’s decisions there seemed to be an element of truth in his claims; Brown did get the ball and the tackle was not overly aggressive.
However, Ferguson has little to be worried about. Daniele de Rossi fired the 30th-minute penalty sky-high, pretty much ending any hope the Italians had of getting back in the game.

The Italian left-back, Cassetti argues that the match would have been completely different if the penalty had been scored and that the shape of the finals would be drastically altered as well. ‘Of course the game would have changed if the penalty had gone in,’ he remarked after the match had ended. ‘We would have qualified. It's a pity - a real pity.’

It fell to Carlos Tevez to seal the game with a superb diving header in the box that caught the end of perfectly timed cross from the wing making the aggregate of the two legs 3-0 to Ferguson’s team.

All this leaves them with a favourable clash with a weakened Barcelona side, indeed United are now being made heavy favourites for the competition - Blue Square Football betting cuirrently have them at 7/4.  Barcelona captain Puyol was booked during the club's 1-0 home win over Schalke last night and will miss the first leg of the semis against United, and a high-ranking club official has insinuated that Ronaldinho and Deco may be dropped from the team due to their off-field conduct.