The prospect of an all-English Champions League final increased last night when, for the second successive season, Manchester United followed in the footsteps of Liverpool and Chelsea to book their place in the last four of the competition.

While Rafael Benítez and Avram Grant’s teams meet in one semi-final, United must revisit the Nou Camp — the scene of their famous triumph against Bayern Munich in 1999 — with Barcelona standing between Sir Alex Ferguson’s team and a place in the final in Moscow on May 21.

As was the case last season, United’s progress from the quarter-finals came at the expense of AS Roma, who were beaten 1-0 at Old Trafford for a 3-0 aggregate defeat. Barcelona, who overcame Schalke 04 2-0 on aggregate after a 1-0 win in Spain, are certain to provide stiff opposition, but United, who have the advantage of playing the first leg away to the Catalan giants on April 23, with the return at Old Trafford six days later, remain the 7-4 favourites with Ladbrokes to win the competition. Liverpool, Chelsea and Barcelona — who will be without their suspended captain, Carles Puyol, for the first leg after he was booked last night — are all at 3-1.

“The fact that it’s Barcelona means it’s certainly going to be the most attractive semi-final,” Ferguson said. “We probably got a lot of our early education against them when we drew 2-2 here in the group stage [in 1994] and then lost 4-0 at the Nou Camp at a time when we could only play three foreign players.

“Then the year we won the European Cup we drew 3-3 in the group stage in Barcelona and 3-3 in the home match. These games go back to representing the way the game should be played, about attacking emphasis.

“I think we’ve got something special in this team. We want to go there and show we are a good team. Barcelona are a wonderful team, but we can’t go there and be negative. We’ve got to be really positive. If we do that we’ve got a marvellous chance.”

With Arsenal to play in the Barclays Premier League at Old Trafford on Sunday, Ferguson started with Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo and Paul Scholes on the substitutes’ bench last night, but despite the odd scare — not least when Roma were awarded a contentious first-half penalty that Daniele De Rossi missed — United were largely comfortable.

They should have been out of sight by the time that Carlos Tévez claimed his seventeenth goal of the season in the 70th minute, but almost as pleasing as the result for Ferguson was the sight of Gary Neville, who received a tremendous reception, making his first appearance for almost 13 months after a long battle with injuries, and Mikaël Silvestre making his first start since September 15. Neville took the captain’s armband after coming on as a second-half substitute. “It just gives us a lot of extra experience at a very important time of the year, so it’s a big bonus,” the United manager said.

Rio Ferdinand needed three stitches in a cut in his right foot at half-time, having injured his left foot against Middlesbrough three days earlier, but the England defender should be fit to start against Arsenal, although Michael Carrick is doubtful after suffering a calf injury.

“It will be a hard-fought match and hopefully we can take the spoils,” Ferguson said. “The energy of the team at this moment in time is far ahead of a year ago. It’s much, much better.”

Amid fears that an all-English final, particularly one that pits United and Liverpool together, could be marred by violent clashes between supporters, the Premier League could now write to Uefa to request that football’s European governing body considers moving the venue from Moscow.

As revealed by Times Online yesterday, it is believed that the Premier League may request the game be played at a neutral venue in England, with Wembley the obvious choice, or Scotland. It is an almost identical situation to last season, when Liverpool and Chelsea were paired in one semi-final and United and AC Milan in the other, only for United’s 3-0 defeat in the second leg at the San Siro to avert the prospect of a final against their fierce Merseyside rivals in Athens.

Uefa dismissed as a non-starter the possibility of switching last season’s final to Wembley in the event of two English clubs reaching the final, but that will not prevent the Premier League from making a similar request this time.

The Premier League is acutely aware that Moscow has been making preparations for the final for many months and that to change the venue at the eleventh hour would cost the Russian capital millions of pounds in lost revenue, but given the sensitivity of the situation, any request would be made in the best of faith.

Still, Uefa is likely to give short shrift to such an idea and point to the 2000 final between Real Madrid and Valencia, the Spanish clubs, in Paris and the all-Italian encounter between Milan and Juventus at Old Trafford in 2003, both of which passed off peacefully, as evidence that trouble can be avoided.