Good evening and welcome to live coverage of Chelsea versus Manchester United in the Premier League’s Monday night fixture from Stamford Bridge. Teams to follow shortly.

We're underway!

We're just going through the handshakes, with a back drop of fireworks and the floodlights set to dim and moody.

The captains Cesar Azpilicueta and Harry Maguire are about to lead out the two teams. Your referee for tonight is Anthony Taylor.

Chelsea’s home record against Manchester United will give them hope; in the Premier League, the visitors have won just once at Stamford Bridge in the last 17 visits. Solskjaer though will look to his own record since taking over at United. In four matches in all competitions, he’s beaten them three times and drawn once.

It’s been a long time since the opening weekend of the season. In the reverse of this fixture back at Old Trafford in August, Frank Lampard’s managerial debut began with a 4-0 defeat. It’s fair to say that the respective levels of hope and fear that result might have infused in each set of supporters with has been tempered somewhat since then.

With United in ninth and six points behind their hosts, a victory tonight feels almost essential if manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is to keep his rebuilding programme on track. It’s been such a stop-start season. Every handful of good results is followed by performances going off a cliff and leading to numbing defeats; exciting new signings are offset by a squad painfully thin on existing quality haemorrhaging players through injury. They've won three and lost three of their last six in the league – which Manchester United will we get tonight?

Chelsea currently occupy one of the four original spots, but Frank Lampard’s team have gone seriously off the boil in recent months. After a six-game winning streak in the autumn they’ve taken just 15 points from the last 39, falling from their lofty position as potential title challengers to looking nervously over their shoulder at Tottenham and Sheffield United behind them.

It might be fourth against ninth in a league where the top side have a 25-point lead over their nearest rivals, but tonight’s fixture is loaded with importance. The fallout from Uefa’s landmark decision to ban Manchester City from the Champions League for two years means that, as things stand and before the lawyers pile in, it’s likely that finishing in fifth place in the Premier League will qualify a team for Europe’s big competition next season.

Manchester United look to have gone for five at the back tonight, with Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Brandon Williams as wing-backs and Luke Shaw as the left-sided centre-half. Eric Bailly is back in the starting XI in place of Victor Lindelof who is ill, and Nemanja Matic comes back into the midfield.

The big news for Chelsea is that top scorer Tammy Abraham has failed a late fitness test and won’t be involved tonight, he’s replaced up front by Michy Batshuayi. There’s no Callum Hudson-Odoi or Mason Mount either, as Mateo Kovacic and Willian return to the team.

Manchester United (5-3-2): De Gea; Wan-Bissaka, Bailly, Maguire (c), Shaw, Williams; Fred, Matic, Fernandes; James, Martial

SUBS: Romero, Dalot, Jones, Perreira, Mata, Greenwood, Ighalo

Chelsea (4-3-3): Caballero; James, Christensen, Rudiger, Azpilicueta (c); Kante, Jorginho, Kovacic; Willian, Batshuayi, Pedro

SUBS: Kepa, Tomori, Zouma, Alonso, Barkley, Mount, Giroud

Manchester United will be wearing black armbands tonight to mark the passing of Harry Gregg, their legendary goalkeeper who performed quite astonishing acts of heroism in the immediate aftermath of the Munich Air Disaster in 1958.