Manchester United defender Jonny Evans hopes they'll have the edge on Chelsea ahead of this weekend's blockbuster.

Evans hopes that the decision to leave the likes of Patrice Evra, Rio Ferdinand, Antonio Valencia, Danny Welbeck and Paul Scholes out of the starting line-up against SC Braga will pay off with a full-strength Chelsea team making a gruelling trip to Shakhtar Donetsk and losing in Ukraine.

"I think the manager has been good at rotating the squad over the years," Evans told MUTV. "He always seems to get it right.

"Whereas Chelsea always seem to play a full-strength squad in most games so it may give us a wee bit of advantage going into the game. But it's going to be a tough away game down there, it always is, and it's up to us to put on a good performance.

"I think you can see the way Chelsea have been scoring goals, they scored four again at the weekend [at Tottenham]. It's going to be a tough game and I don't think our record has been great down there in the last few seasons so we have to put on a good away performance like we did at Newcastle."