The frustration of defeat - and the manner of it - at Anfield last month will fuel the fire of Sir Alex Ferguson’s men at Stamford Bridge on Sunday.

The United boss says his players “didn’t deal with the wounded animal in the way we should have” against a Liverpool side scrapping for their very survival in the title race. On Sunday, faced with a far more potent threat to United’s championship crown, Sir Alex is hoping the Anfield experience will have steeled his men.

"It’s always a hard game at Chelsea, but we’ll deal with it better than we did at Anfield, I’m sure of that,” he told Inside United magazine, out today. “They’re shaping up [to be the main challengers]. It seems they’ll be the ones to get in front of.”

Chelsea currently head the league table, two points ahead of United, while Arsenal sit in third, three points behind the Reds with a game in hand. All the more reason why a result on Sunday is so imperative.

Carlo Ancelotti’s teams are notoriously difficult to break down and beat – but playing with two strikers means the game may be more attacking and open than is often the norm for Chelsea-United battles. “It’s a very experienced team,” adds Sir Alex. “Their consistency, compared to last season, has probably been a bit better under Ancelotti.

"He’s brought in the system he used at AC Milan of the diamond in the middle of the pitch. It’s hard to break down when you get into their third, because they’ve got bodies compacted into the central area of the pitch. Jose Mourinho played one up and five in the middle of the park – that also made Chelsea very difficult to beat, but in a different way to what Ancelotti is doing. Ancelotti’s got the two strikers, and that is a major change compared to Scolari and Ranieri.”