ALSO SEE ‘AS ROMA - MANCHESTER UNITED:A TACTICAL LOOK’

Both sides face off for what’s a highly-anticipated clash between two teams of footballing gladiators at Rome’s cavernous Olímpico coliseum, although with their domestic competitions also weighing into the rumble.

Manchester United are sitting pretty atop the EPL with a six-point lead over Chelsea that many pundits see as a gap this too wide for the Stamford outfit to bridge.  With the FA Barclaycard Premiership almost in the bag, the idea of making it a double is highly appealing.

A collateral effect of the battle to stop Chelsea’s ‘hat trick’ at home has been that the squad has taken a bit of a battering.  The stresses and strains of keeping the lead mean that both Neville and Vidic are out and there are niggling worries that all the goals were spent in the past two 4-1 EPL wins.

AS Roma’s recent draw with AC Milan (on the same stage as Wednesday’s battle) means that Inter, who’ll also meet Roma (again) in the Coppa de Italia (Italian Cup) Final, are now 20 points ahead with only 30 points left in play this season. 

That means that virtually all the Giallorossi efforts will be poured into an assault on the yearned-for Champions League rather than the decaffeinated Coppa and the pipedream utopia of catching the galloping Milanese Nerazzurri in Serie A.

Both also went through with different impressions being left on observers.  Roma may have been stumped and kept to a goalless draw at the Olímpico by Olympique Lyon, but the Romans marched into France and stuffed the Gauls with goals from Totti and Mancini.

Manchester United, however, failed to impress at Lille with an 83^rd minute Giggs free-kick, taken with swift cheek, being the only way past a French side who hardly played their best game and with the English artillery demonstrating damp powder with only 3 shots on target. 

Even at Old Trafford the Red Devils had to wait until a 72^nd minute Larsson strike to claim another slim win.  It’s not really the sort of stuff to get the Romans quaking in their boots, despite the recent double-tap of 4-1 wins in the EPL, with Man U showing a worrying dependence on second-half resurges.