Portuguese skipper Cristiano Ronaldo is in the best of forms. It's barely a great revelation to point on the biggest threat faced by Manchester United in Tuesday's run-in with Real Madrid will be former Old Trafford hero Cristiano Ronaldo.
But the biggest question on cards is that "how do you stop CR7 ?" is far from straightforward.
One best answer, especially for such a positive team as United, is to concentrate upon the attack, which is the best form of defence. Eventually, if the ball is inside Real's half, Ronaldo can't score.
But, that would be playing directly into Jose Mourinho's hands as his team are masters of the lethal counter-attack. As they displayed in Tuesday's superbly impressive 3-1 Spanish Cup victory at Barcelona, they are more than happy to sit deep, defend with intensity and then produce the killer sting of a faster transition into attack.
Sketching a perfect plan for playing against Ronaldo is already on the cards. Cristiano Ronaldo scored against Reading in a brilliant manner. However, the ex Reading captain Graeme Murty played against Cristiano Ronaldo four times during the forward's time in England:
"Playing against him is an intimidating experience for any defender, because you know you're coming up against the most gifted individual you'll ever have to face in your entire career. It's not just his ability, because he's also very intelligent. I think he 'profiles' his opponents during the game better than anyone else in the world. By that I mean he'll very quickly assess the defenders he's up against, work out their strengths and weaknesses and how he can exploit them."
Ronaldo is core to this strategy due to his unparalleled capacity to run with the ball at high speed. But he's not alone: team-mates Angel di Maria and Mesut Ozil, in particular, are also deadly on the break, and Ronaldo constantly charges downfield to profit from their swift runs forward.
That's precisely what happened for Real's second goal at the Nou Camp last week. Barcelona were attacking, with Mourinho's men penned back inside their own region; seconds later, Di Maria had broken forward, outdid Carles Puyol and fired in a shot that Jose Pinto could only parry into the path of the onrushing Ronaldo for a simple finish.
The ultimate thing to learn for United, then, is to rein in their natural gung-ho facet, maintain caution and make sure they don't commit too many men forward. Even when they are attacking, it will be imperative for the Red Devils to have enough numbers in defence to handle Real's counter-attacks.
Also, none of this is news to Sir Alex Ferguson. No person has an increased appreciation of Ronaldo's wide-ranging abilities than the manager who signed him from Sporting Lisbon in 2003 and reaped the benefits of his talent for six seasons.
Ferguson will be well aware that Ronaldo's perfect ploy is to cut inside from his beginning position on the left and find space to shoot, so the United boss is likely to instruct his players to channel the danger player into wide areas whenever necessary.
