Manchester United can move three points clear at the top of the standings with a home win over Fulham, a team that arrive to Old Trafford on the back of the 3-0 home defeat to Swansea.

This season has been pretty disappointing for Manchester United’s standards seeing that the Red Devils were eliminated from the every competition they entered, but there is still enough time to make the best out of a difficult situation.

While Sir Alex Ferguson’s side were largely outplayed and beaten twice by Athletic Bilbao in Europa League, they managed to win five straight games in the Premiership and are now again seen as favourites for the title.

After Manchester City could only bring one point from Britannia Stadium, United can create a three-point advantage by beating Fulham, and they are 1.25 (1/4) with Stan James to do so.

Taking into account that United scored at least two goals in every one of their last nine Premier League games, backing them to score over 1.5 goals at odds of 1.33 (3/9) offered by bet365 looks like the right thing to do.

Tom Cleverley and Phil Jones are back in contention, but Michael Owen, Anderson, Nani, Darren Fletcher and Nemanja Vidic remain sidelined.

Probable starting line-up (4-4-1-1): De Gea – Smalling, Evans, Ferdinand, Evra – Valencia, Scholes, Carrick, Young – Rooney – Hernandez.

Fulham experienced some problems in the first part of the season as their small squad couldn’t really cope with the busy schedule, whereas new boss Martin Jol also needed some time to make this team his own.

The Cottagers kept improving as the season unfolded and having virtually secured Premiership survival, they are now fighting for a top half finish.

The impressive three-match winning run came to an end as Fulham lost to Aston Villa two weeks ago, but it was the 3-0 home defeat to Swansea that had everyone at the club worried.

The players could need some time to recover from such a disappointing defeat and the game against high-flying Manchester United definitely comes at a bad time.

Orlando Sa, Steve Sidwell and Zdenek Grygera remain injury worries, but Danny Murphy and Damien Duff are fit to play.

Probable starting line-up (4-2-3-1): Schwarzer – Baird, Senderos, Hangeland, Riise – Diarra, Murphy – Ruiz, Dempsey, Dembele – Pogrebnyak.