Manchester United looks strong

To judge by defending champion Manchester United's decisive 3-0 victory over Aalborg BK in Denmark on Tuesday, Coach Alex Ferguson's squad is the best-armed of the 32 teams, boasting a quartet of goal scorers in Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Carlos Tevez and Dimitar Berbatov.

Such riches allow Ferguson to chop and change at will, and usually one of the four comes through.

Against Aalborg, it was Bulgaria's Berbatov. Bought from Tottenham Hotspur last month for $54 million, he scored his first two goals for the Red Devils as they demolished the Danish side. Rooney got the other.

"That will help his confidence," Ferguson said of Berbatov. "Always when you get transferred for that amount of money, you want your first goal as quickly as possible."

The only down note for United was the knee injury suffered by midfielder Paul Scholes that will sideline him for up to 10 weeks.

Arsenal and Liverpool have also shown their firepower. On Tuesday, Arsenal humiliated FC Porto, 4-0, in London as Robin van Persie and Emmanuel Adebayor each scored twice. It was midfielder Cesc Fabregas, however, who orchestrated the victory.

"Fabregas was outstanding," said Arsenal Coach Arsene Wenger. "He was good defensively and offensively. It was the complete performance. This is the response I wanted. We could have scored a few more, but most important was to win and respond in a convincing way. That's what we did."

Five-time champion Liverpool routed PSV Eindhoven, 3-1, on Wednesday with two of the goals being especially noteworthy.

After Dutchman Dirk Kuyt had put Liverpool ahead in the fourth minute, Ireland's Robbie Keane, a $33-million summer acquisition from Tottenham, scored his first goal for the club on a rainy night at Anfield.

That would have been the headline in Thursday morning's Liverpool Echo, but Steven Gerrard then banged in his 100th goal for Liverpool to bring the crowd to its feet and steal the limelight.

Gerrard is the 16th player in Liverpool's 116-year history to reach the century mark and the first since his England teammate Michael Owen did so in 2001.

"It was almost a perfect night," said Liverpool Coach Rafael Benitez.

The fourth English club in the competition, last season's Champion League runner-up Chelsea, found the going much tougher but managed to escape from Romania with a 0-0 tie against CFR Cluj.