Andy Potts

CSKA Moscow 0

Manchester United 1

After Rubin's fairytale win in Barcelona it was back to reality with a bump for Russian football as CSKA came up against Manchester United - and the two sides produced a game which highlighted all that is wrong with Europe's premier club competition.

The financial rewards of progress in the competition, which tend to enrich the ‘have-a-lots' and the ‘have-even-mores' of the game, meant that both sides adopted a cautious approach with the emphasis on not losing.

All of which ensured that the real losers were the 54,000 fans who shivered their way through a largely unrewarding spectacle settled by Antonio Valencia's 86th-minute winner for the visitors.

It was a deserved victory, just about. United had most of the possession and created the better of the handful of scoring opportunities to warm up a chilly Luzhniki.

Valencia had already hit the bar from long range before Nani's left-wing cross was flicked into his path by Dimitar Berbatov and he fired home from an acute angle to secure a third win in three Group B games.

For CSKA, apart from flickers of intent from Milos Krasic, it was a largely sterile show, with only a glancing first-half header from Tomas Necid giving even fleeting alarm to visiting goalie Edwin van der Sar.

Questioned about his side's lack of attacking football, CSKA head coach Juande Ramos admitted that Man U were overwhelming favourites to win the group: "Nobody is going to throw the gauntlet in their face - we will fight with the others in the group.

"Not many teams can play against United in an attacking way. We created a few chances but couldn't take them. I can't say whether we were negative or not, but we tried to attack."

More worryingly for fans looking forward to the return match at Old Trafford on November 3, it seems Ramos will be hoping for respectability rather than thrills again.

"The match in Manchester is important to us, but the decisive games will be against our direct rivals Besiktas and Wolfsburg," he said. "We want to play with dignity at Old Trafford, but our main matches will come after that."

In other words, expect to see goalkeeper Igor Akinfeyev line up his teammates in an ultra-defensive ‘park the team bus' formation and hope that United are willing to settle for a draw which will almost certainly see them through to the knock-out stages.

Don't get up any hopes of a Rubin-style stunner - pragmatism rules this day.

For United, meanwhile, Sir Alex Ferguson decided not to risk any players carrying an injury - mindful of an important English Premiership game against Liverpool at the weekend - and admitted part of his plan had been to give playing time to the recently recovered Rio Ferdinand and Wes Brown.

United fans will doubtless argue that this team is not a Harlem Globetrotters-style novelty act, and has a responsibility to nurse its squad through a bloated campaign at home and abroad, but it sits ill with UEFA's much-vaunted claims that their flagship tournament is the greatest in the world, bringing the best players to a wider public.

Ferguson also insisted that he sent a team to Moscow looking to win, but much of his post-match talk was about "patience" and "common sense", rather than excitement and entertainment.

In a bizarre footnote to the largely unpalatable fare served up at Luzhniki, Ferguson was left fuming when his team's specially prepared post-match meals, flown over from Manchester, were destroyed by Russian customs officials, The Guardian reports. The squad was forced to refuel with dishes supplied by the airport caterers instead.