YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED FOR THE CARNIVAL

The trip to Manchester didn't go quite according to plan however. To add insult to the injury of missing out on the Faschnacht carnival celebrations (the biggest public holiday of the year) the Basel players were forced to sit it out at the airport. The "Swiss" charter plane was delayed for two and a half hours as it failed a number of security checks which meant replacement parts had to be brought over from Zürich. All of this apparently enraged FC Basel officials who complained and later during the flight received a personal apology from the airline's CEO which was relayed to the team via the pilot!

Basel have experienced mixed preparations for tonight's match at Old Trafford. After a 2-0 win at home to Servette in the Swiss Cup on Wednesday they produced an identical scoreline in their league game on Saturday at home to errrr... Servette. Goals from Bernd Haas, on loan from Sunderland and Murat Yakin (Hakan Yakin's less talented brother) saw off the bottom of the table side.

Ex-Spurs manager Christian Gross isn't getting too carried away though. He knows it is going to be a tougher task tonight and played down the idea that SAF will field a very weakened team:

"Seven or eight first teamers will start. Ferguson will certainly want to any avoid negative headlines when playing at home and will definitely not underestimate us."

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