Liverpool versus Manchester United retains its place as one of the most exciting rivalry matches in world football.

Losing this match hurts. Winning it feels utterly delightful.

So when the two meet at Anfield on Sunday, expect fireworks.

Remarkably, there’s already a 16-point difference between the two sides and many are expecting that gap to widen to 19 with a Liverpool victory.

The power shift has been evident, with the Merseyside outfit emerging as genuine Premier League title contenders while Jose Mourinho’s Man United have been extremely inconsistent.

Yet the chance to hand Liverpool their first defeat in the league will be all Mourinho’s players need as motivation.

The Portuguese coach will probably be rueing the fact that there are very few leaders in his squad.

Evra posts on Instagram 

That wasn’t the case during Sir Alex Ferguson’s reign, where several of his players understood that losing to Liverpool wasn’t an option.

That included Patrice Evra, who was involved in his fair share of controversial moments against the Anfield club.

The biggest was the incident with Luis Suarez in 2011, which led to the Uruguayan being charged and banned from football for racially abusing Evra.

That led to this...

The 37-year-old has posted on Instagram ahead of the meeting and you get the impression that he would love nothing more than to be kitting up for another battle against Liverpool.

Sharing images of him on the receiving end of a crunching challenge and jokingly biting into a fake arm - an apparent reference to Suarez’s bite on Branislav Ivanovic in 2013 - Evra showed that he’s ready for the clash.

He clearly gets it.

Mourinho has dubbed Liverpool “the lucky ones” ahead of the match, suggesting that their recent wins over Everton, Bournemouth and Napoli arrived in fortuitous circumstances.

"They are top of the league, they have this feeling of - I know that feeling well - the feeling of the lucky ones where everything goes in your direction,” Mourinho told reporters, per Sky Sports.

"They know how they beat Everton, they know that the last match, the opening goal was offside, and they know that against Napoli in the last seconds they could be out.”