Club Brugge coach Michel Preud'homme says he was aware of the threat Manchester United's Marouane Fellaini would pose long before their Champions League game kicked off on Wednesday.
The midfielder was a key player in Preud'homme's Standard Liege team that won the Belgian league in 2008 and Fellaini came back to haunt him at Old Trafford by scoring a stoppage-time goal that gave United a comfortable 3-1 win.
Preud'homme said Brugge made Fellaini's job easier on Tuesday because of the dismissal of Brandon Mechele, who received his second yellow card for a petty foul on Javier Hernandez in the 80th minute.
"He is still my friend, of course," the Brugge boss said of Fellaini. "If you lose one central defender, it's difficult to mark all the good headers of the other team.
"Even if they're marking him, he's so strong with his head, so it's always difficult. We know him very well. I used him in this situation many times before.
"But you need to have the players to stop him and with one player less, it was difficult to do that."