It's a matter of pride

With a point gained, a fist-clenching Alex Ferguson was on the pitch at the end. With a red card to his name, a protesting Sol Campbell had left it minutes before

On that April night last year Arsenal lost their centre half and, in effect, their title. The 2-2 draw at Highbury saw Manchester United keep the momentum that was barrelling them towards the championship.

We expect a resonant occasion when these clubs grapple. The FA shuddered at the Old Trafford brawl of 1990 and twitched again over the shabby altercation there this season. The needle has also gone off the dial for other reasons. An Arsenal defence, comprising four nationalities, was at sixes and sevens while conceding half a dozen goals at United's ground in 2001. The following year they came back to lord it over Ferguson by securing the Premiership there.

After storms of that force, tomorrow's match at Highbury looks stuck in the doldrums. The victors' bragging rights will be curtailed this time. Should United overcome Arsenal, it will do more for their morale than their title hopes. They would actually have been doing Chelsea's work, since it is the Stamford Bridge side who are in closer pursuit of the Premiership leaders. Even Ferguson merely says that a United win would make Arsenal "thoughtful".

Even then Arsene Wenger's pensiveness could be directed elsewhere. The FA Cup semi-final next Saturday might even count for more now that he has become seduced by the picturesque possibility of his club lifting the trophy in three consecutive years.

More pragmatically, his gaze will be drawn to the second leg of the Champions League quarter-final with Chelsea.

A win tomorrow could feel like a long stride towards the championship but Arsenal know there are other days in which they can take those steps. So far, as the statistical targets go, Wenger and his men are polite rather than engrossed when the number crunchers speak. How excited can you expect footballers to be when told that this weekend they may equal the record unbeaten sequence within a league season of 30 matches that Burnley set in 1920-21?

It is professionalism that is uppermost at Arsenal, who require 19 points at most from nine games to regain the championship. There would admittedly be a specific satisfaction in harvesting three of them from the field tomorrow, and it would be rewarding to hint they are developing an ascendancy that their rivals will struggle to overturn in the next year or two.

"From 1998 to 2001 United were clearly the better team because most of their players had reached the peak of their careers together," said Wenger. "In the last three years we have come back to a comparable level at least."

He could have been thinking of more than just points totals when he identified the issue in tomorrow's game: "It's a good opportunity to extend the difference with United but I am long enough in England to know the difference is never enough."

More light could be cast on the development of Wenger's squad with the likely inclusion of the 18-year-old Gael Clichy in the line-up. Far from suffering stage fright, the Frenchman wallowed in the occasion when Arsenal beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge last month.

The injured Ashley Cole was once so good a prospect that the club soon dispensed with Silvinho. The cycles of football keep turning and, while the England left back, at 23, has no cause to fear for his place, he may have the wry realisation that he is now the established figure squinting at a brash young challenger.

When Ferguson seeks for signs of progress in his own squad he will not do so with Wenger's detached curiosity. United's manager must be aware of his mixed record in the transfer market since the treble-winning year of 1999 and he has to defend his present batch of signings with the claim that they will contribute to the cause once they have fully settled.

He can advance Cristiano Ronaldo, unexpectedly resolute and effective even in the 4-1 defeat by Manchester City, to underpin that argument but there is much more to be done before anyone is persuaded that a brash and brilliant tearaway team is emerging at Old Trafford.

Ferguson has to uphold a competitive spirit until the place among the Premiership also rans is inescapable but he is really required to think of next season.

Predictably Roy Keane had no truck with the suggestion that winning the FA Cup would be a deep satisfaction and United are really left just to show Arsenal that battle will be joined again after this interlude.

At Highbury tomorrow it would be encouraging if the defence stopped looking as if it was in mourning for Rio Ferdinand, if the midfield shed its provisional air and if the attack did not place the sort of emphasis on Ruud van Nistelrooy that has made his recent loss of form excruciating.

"Our credentials are the most important thing," said Ferguson, "and we have to show those credentials on the pitch. Arsenal know that; they understand exactly and they won't underestimate us." Wenger's team will take the visitors very seriously and United, principally, have something to prove to themselves.