The Blues enter Europe’s flagship competition on the back of two successive disappointing RaboDirect Pro12 league defeats at home against Ulster and Glasgow but will be buoyed by the fact that Sale Sharks haven’t exactly reached any great heights in the Aviva Premiership either.
With French outfits Toulon and Montpellier also in the same group, Phil Davies’s side must return from Salford City Stadium with a positive result if they have serious ambitions of making it out of the group for the knock-out stages.
Both sides having won two and lost two in their previous Heineken Cup encounters against each other, winning their home matches.
Cuthbert comes into the backs in place of Harry Robinsos while the four changes in the forwards sees Warburton, Davies, Marc Breeze and Tafa’ao Filise all returning to the starting XV, having missed the match against Glasgow last Friday.
Davies, said, “We have enjoyed a great tradition in the tournament as the Blues.
“We’re one of the top seeds and are very eager to protect that status, so we’re keen to do well in the competition as a whole.
“It will be very direct, forward battle on Sunday. There are areas which we can improve on, particularly the consistency with which we perform all the moves.
“We need the players to deliver that for us and we need to make sure that we give them the confidence to do that.
“We need to encourage them to play positively and get those key fundamentals right.”
