Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson admits last season's Champions League flop hurt him.

Ferguson insists the lessons have been learned and that he will call on his big guns rather than fringe players and young prospects to restore the club's ­self-esteem.

He said: "It hurt last year. It hurt ­everybody. It's not good to go out at the group stage, particularly when we were in ­control. Over the previous few years we'd gone through the group stage pretty comfortably, so we were playing a lot of young players.

"But we never got out of the group last time.

"It was a disappointment for us. We'll definitely take no chances this time. We'll play our strongest team on Wednesday."