England striker Michael Owen demonstrated his finishing class with a hat-trick on Tuesday to seal Manchester United's 3-1 victory at Wolfsburg to dump the Germans out of the Champions League. After his first-half header, Owen slid home his second on 83 minutes before producing a superb effort in extra-time to claim his third and secure Sir Alex Ferguson's side top spot in Group B.
"Michael Owen is one of the best strikers in the last third of the field in terms of his movement, his positional play and also in terms of his finishing," insisted Ferguson with Owen set to celebrate his 30th birthday on December 14. CSKA Moscow's 2-1 win at Besiktas put the Russians through as runners-up at Wolfsburg's expense.
With just one fit first-choice defenders in his squad, Ferguson opted to play a 3-5-2 formation with three centre-backs to cope with Wolfsburg's strikers Edin Dzeko and Grafite and his gamble paid off. "It was a risk in terms of changing the system and we were concerned about containing Dzeko and Grafite, I thought playing three centre-backs would give us a good chance.
"There was some pressure on Wolfsburg to get the result and that suited us as we could afford to be patient. "They missed two chances to go ahead in the first-half and we may have had to change things if we had been playing catch up. "Wolfsburg are a strong team and they had some bad luck tonight."
Bosnia and Herzegovina striker Dzeko, who also scored in the first-leg at Old Trafford which United won last September, equalised for the Germans in the second-half only for Owen to make sure of the three points. "The Champion's League is over for us," said Dzeko. "This is a great pity, we could have already decided everything in Moscow, but we missed out chances. "Unfortunately, we have also not used our second chance here tonight."
United came to Germany missing 14 first-team players and were left with just one fit regular defender as Ferguson opted to leave behind his stars Wayne Rooney, Dimitar Berbatov and Ryan Giggs. 'Flu victim Nemanja Vidic stayed at home along with Gary Neville and Wes Brown, who both suffered injuries in Saturday's 4-0 win at West Ham.
Longer-term absentees Rio Ferdinand, John O'Shea and Jonny Evans, plus Brazilian twins Fabio and Rafael da Silva were all unfit leaving France left-back Patrice Evra as the last first-team defender standing. Ferguson opted for a back three of Evra, Darren Fletcher and Michael Carrick with South Korean's Ji-Sung Park and Brazilian Anderson on the flanks. The first significant chance of the first-half fell to Wolfsburg's Italian World Cup-winning defender Andrea Barzagli who headed over on 17 minutes from a corner with the goal at his mercy.