January began with a tough goodbye, a difficult cup tie and next up, a potential classic. Pat Nevin gives his weekly thoughts on it all.

First of all I would like to mention Wayne Bridge and say thank you to him for his time at Chelsea. I always liked him as a player and if anyone can claim bad luck in his Blues career it certainly has to be the England defender.

The injuries were bad enough but when the only left full-back considered better than him for the national team was signed, then there has to be a level of sympathy there.

Wayne didn't walk off in a huff however and the fact that he still managed to amass over 140 appearances for the club in his six injury hit seasons, against such stiff competition as Ashley Cole, just goes to underline his quality. I wish him the best in his time in Manchester, unless of course he is playing against Chelsea of course.

Manchester is on all our minds just now as one of the games of the season is looming on the near horizon. There can be little doubt that most observers outside Chelsea and United will have it pencilled in as a home win, even though we still head them in the league and have scored far more goals, than the allegedly most attacking side in the country, in the campaign to date.

What most people are thinking of course is that we have now drawn six of our last ten games and they are on a bit of a roll. This game will however be a one off and the form book will count for relatively little.

One thing that I suspect will happen is that this one will be a classic match. United will certainly set out to attack at Old Trafford just as they always do, but I think Chelsea are one of the few teams in the country, indeed one of the few in the world, who will go to the home of the champions and set out to win the match by attacking themselves.

In many ways it could be a throwback to the Champions League final in Moscow. That was one of the most entertaining in the recent history of finals in that particular trophy, it certainly had two of the most positive and attack-minded sides, both who were committed to playing football without fear.

I just hope it isn't the same result, though a draw after 90 minutes is still the most likely to my mind, particularly as we appear to have become the draw specialists of late.

Last season the difference between the two sides over the course of the league campaign was probably the incredible form of Cristiano Ronaldo. For whatever reason he has been less effective this time round and generally he doesn't appear to enjoy playing against Ashley Cole, just look how often he switches to the other wing when he plays against Chelsea.

United will reason that the Portuguese is getting better as the season progresses and both Tevez and Rooney could say the same thing, but we can reply that every extra week that Didier Drogba is back from injury is hopefully a week nearer his very best fitness and form.

There will also be a number of changes from the 1-1 draw against Southend at the weekend with Michael Ballack, John Terry and Deco all available and Petr Cech likely to be selected for the big one. So when Anelka and Bosingwa are also considered, it would be rather foolhardy of United to take too much from the result against the League One outfit.

Another thing regarding the possible team selection, wouldn't it be good to see the classic triumvirate of Terry, Carvalho and Cech back together again? This is not being disrespectful of the others who have played in the positions recently, they have generally been miserly, but those three are capable of stopping the very best for a very long time and it does seem a long time since we have had them playing together.

It will come down to fitness levels and who the boss thinks will be needed on the day, but a loss would not be good news at all for us. This one represents the classic six-pointer as they say in the trade.

A win for United then they will be a point behind and those two games in hand will feel much easier. If however we can snatch the three points on offer, then the gap would be seven and those two games in hand would become must wins - and those situations are always that much harder.

Let's hope our top scorer for the calendar year of 2008 can open his account for 2009 against the Reds. Last week I asked which player did score the most goals for Chelsea during that period from January 2008 to the end of December the same year and most of you who got in touch got the answer right, it was Frank Lampard, though many also thought it was Nicolas Anelka.

The winner chosen by one of the founder members of 'Twilight' Appreciation Society (It is a book and a film for youngsters, particularly teenage girls) was George Mervin from Nairobi in Kenya, the first African winner for quite a while! The DVD is on its way.

This week to win a new prize - the Chelsea FC edition of Monopoly - there is a little more digging for you to do. I do like to make these questions a bit tricky and requiring a bit of effort you see. When was the last time Petr Cech, John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho started a game together for Chelsea?

Answers as ever to pat.nevin@chelseafc.com and the winner will be picked at random by my assistant next week, if of course she gets back in time from seeing that film yet again.

Read Pat's previous columns here.