Branislav Ivanovic Is Confident About Visit To Old Trafford

Yesterday Chelsea boss Andre Villas-Boas talked about the big game on Sunday against Manchester United, and the fact the Chelsea will be going their to win. Today Branislav Ivanovic has had his say and he echoes his managers comments.

Ivanovic said, “Sunday’s game is the first big, big test for our team under the new manager. It is a match which will show how far we have improved and it’s even more important psychologically for both teams. We will all be assessing the strength of our opponents with every tackle and every pass and know we will have to use 100 per cent of our power against them.”

Ivanovic went on to say, “United have started this season very well and Wayne Rooney is in great form at the moment. He has scored a lot of goals already and we will have to be at our best if we are going to stop him. United have clearly improved as a group this season. But we are also making progress and will look to show that on the pitch at Old Trafford.”

Ivanovic likened United’s start this season to the start Chelsea had last year. He said, If you remember, we started last season in the same way as United have started this one. But it does not mean you will end up as champions. Last season was a different situation because we went there knowing we had to win.”

Yes we did start last season like a house on fire and ended up with nothing. Everybody was talking about how we were going to win this and win that. Well we all know what happened. This year no-one is even mentioning us, which personally I think is great.

Ivanovic continued on by saying, “Now we are going there just to show our best football and trying our best to get a good result. We always look to win every game, but maybe a draw would not be such a bad result. It’s very important for us to stay close to first position. We don’t want the gap at the top to get too big. We have been encouraged by the way we have played in our last two games against Sunderland and Bayer Leverkusen. And we have extra motivation from the games which we lost to United at the end of last season.

Yes we certainly owe United a result or two after what happened at the end of last season, and what better time to start than on Sunday afternoon. Come on Chelsea we are all right behind you.