Time for Gunners to pull the trigger

It8217;s crunch time at Old Trafford, and the crunch won8217;t just be when Keane meets Viera. The first big match of the Premiership seas...

It8217;s crunch time at Old Trafford, and the crunch won8217;t just be when Keane meets Viera. The first big match of the Premiership season could decide the fate of the title, it could decide the future of one club and several players. And it could tell Chelsea, who occupy the top spot in the league table, who their main rival will be in the months ahead.

Arsenal go into the match as underdogs, the odds stacked against them. Their form, their porous, crumbling defence, their lack of confidence, the almost-certain absence of Sol Campbell. And, niggling away in their minds, the uncertainty over the future, over whether the Highbury club have the ambition and the wherewithal to be the biggest and best in the land.

Manchester United, meanwhile, have just come off a 5-0 midweek European win; their new signings are on song and they seem to have picked up from where they left off last season. The swagger is in place.

But football thrives on its ability to bring the best out of players when the chips are down. Old Trafford, where Arsenal famously won the league two seasons ago, would be the best place for the Gunners to recover their form. One bad match doesn8217;t destroy a great team and, though Arsenal do have serious manpower problems, they also possess, in Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry, two of the most competitive characters in the Premiership.

United8217;s aces will be, again, skipper Roy Keane and Ruud Van Nistelrooy, but Alex Ferguson has a potential trump card up his sleeve: the teenage sorcerer Ronaldo, who is a combination of Henry and Pires and could well torment Toure and Keown in the heart of the Arsenal defence or Ashley Cole on the flank.

If United win, it will be very difficult for Arsenal to recover momentum, to keep the season from spinning out of control. Over the next month, they face Newcastle, Chelsea and Liverpool, in addition to their Champions League assignments. Enough, despite Vieira and Henry, for them collapse under the weight of pressure 8212; the knowledge that aren8217;t cutting it in Europe will offer little solace.

And another season without trophies, plus the white elephant that their new stadium project is turning out to be, could convince their key players their ambitions would be better served elsewhere.

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If Arsenal win, it will be a huge slap in the face for United but not necessarily the end. Ferguson has far more depth in his squad to tackle the demands of Europe and the Premiership and, if nothing else, can draw on the experience of last season when United stopped a rampant, majestic Arsenal dead in their tracks.

And if it is a draw, rest assured Chelsea will be laughing.