Bailly Excited By European Nights

The Europa League returns to Old Trafford with the visit of Zorya Luhansk and centre-back Eric Bailly is raring to go, having grown up watching Manchester United's European adventures from afar.

Our Player of the Month for August has made a fine start to his Reds career and is expected to start against the Ukrainians, who secured a 1-1 draw against Robin van Persie’s Fenerbahce in their opening Group A match. While the opposition are not among the competition's most recognisable teams, Bailly is motivated for action, especially after the 1-0 defeat at Feyenoord.

“I used to watch United play in the Champions League on TV,” Bailly told MUTV ahead of tonight’s match. “This is a bit different being with it being the Europa League but for sure we’ll give our best to bring another win to our fans. I’m really excited and looking forward to playing this game on Thursday.

“There are no weak teams in this competition, everyone has quality. If you look at the last game we played against Feyenoord that showed us that we need to pay careful attention to all the different teams. We’ll give our best to win at Old Trafford this time. We need to be wary of Zorya as their draw against Fenerbahce was a good result for them. They will try to come to Old Trafford to win the game. We have trained hard this week preparing for this game and we believe we can win it.”

Although Bailly is only 22 with less than 100 first-team matches to his name, he has good experience in the Europa League after reaching last season’s semi-finals with old club Villarreal. He was knocked out by beaten finalists Liverpool and thus hopes to go one stage further with United this campaign.

“Playing in the semi-final was something very special as that was the first time for me that I had succeeded in reaching such a round of a competition,” Eric told us. “Now I have more experience, this is the second time I have played in this competition and I hope that will help.

“If we keep working hard as a team and keep our spirit going I hope we can achieve the same or go even better and bring the trophy home. The first thing we need to do though is think step-by-step and take each game as it comes. We need to focus on the next game and then we’ll see what happens in the future.”