Arsenal are always fired up by United

I know Wenger believes in them 100 per cent and it has to be time for them to deliver. The club chose this path by investing in the new stadium, and all the financial implications that came with that meant a reliance on youth.

Now is the time for those young players to prove they are the future of Arsenal. When you play for Arsenal, you have to prove you can be a part of its future every time you are on the pitch and these youngsters must now repay the faith shown in them by their manager and the board.

Nicklas Bendtner has a key role now with Emmanuel Adebayor and Robin van Persie unavailable and I want to see more from him. One or two things didn't work out for him on Wednesday and I just want to see more passion.

I rate him very highly but he is at the point now where he must show he is desperate to make it work. That is missing from his game at the moment. A lot is riding on Bendtner and he needs support that I know he will get from within the camp but I am sure he can go out there and do what is required.

United are of course European champions but I don't think Arsenal are ever underdogs when they play at home. They play with such purpose, energy and pace. United have that arrogance of champions and Arsenal are a group of young pretenders trying to wrestle superiority from them.

That balance of power is a similar situation to when I was playing a few years ago. The two sides were very evenly matched. We had managed to snatch a bit of dominance away from United in 1998 by winning the Double, were very close to them in their Treble year and then in 2002 we won the League again.

They won it the following year and that infamous match at Old Trafford in September 2003 - when Ruud van Nistelrooy missed a late penalty in a 0-0 draw - was the defining moment in the battle for Premier League supremacy at that time.

We knew the importance of going there and getting at least a point. The incident at the final whistle was the culmination of two teams reaching boiling point and it bubbled over.

You react at the time instinctively. There was so much riding on the game and you so desperately want to win it, we ended up acting in an unprofessional manner. You can't change it, you can't really regret it - we were incensed by Van Nistelrooy and I am sure they were angry about our behaviour after that.

He had got Patrick Vieira sent off and we were enraged by that and I guess he became a figure of anger. We got fed up with him because it wasn't really the first incident surrounding him.

Ultimately, we had a tremendous respect for United - things just spilled over. There is a responsibility when you are on the pitch to act as role models and I certainly didn't realise the impact my actions that day would have on the rest of football. Had that happened earlier in my career, you would not have seen me do that again.

We went unbeaten for the rest of that season and then Roman Abramovich came to Chelsea and the footballing landscape changed with another powerful force at the top of the game.

Consequently, the United and Arsenal rivalry has appeared somewhat diluted in the last couple of years.

Being cynical, that might be because Fergie has won everything recently but I would like to think it is because they know it is important for two major figureheads in the world game such as they to get on, so that then sets an example that filters down to the players.

Of course, Dimitar Berbatov won't need much motivation as an ex-Tottenham player against Arsenal and he is starting to hit top gear. Wayne Rooney is firing on all cylinders and United have got more options at the front of their team than Arsenal, even when Adebayor and Van Persie are fit.

But for me, Chelsea are the team to catch. They have got a team for all occasions and play attractive football under Luiz Felipe Scolari. Although they hit the buffers in against Roma, they just have an extra swagger about them.

Liverpool have also got the bit between their teeth and I like the character I see in Rafael Benitez's team - they clearly feel they have the opportunity to challenge for the first time in years.

But those two are six points clear and for Arsenal, the target is clear. The players will know in the back of their minds that they have to win tomorrow. Do that and they can set their sights on overhauling the top two and this talk of crisis could become a distant memory.