Head to head

Tonight he'll be asking his survival squad to produce a performance that could go a long way to wrecking the Gunners' championship ambitions.

It has turned into a rare old season since Wanderers took a 4-1 caning at Highbury in their fifth fixture back in the top flight. They'd started encouragingly and there was no hint at that point of the nightmares to come.

True, they got a lesson in Premiership life but Todd put the defeat into perspective when he forecast that Arsene Wenger's side would be "there or thereabouts when the championship was decided."

But it never crossed his or anyone else's minds that, by the time the return fixture came round, Wanderers would be staring relegation in the face.

That said, no-one thought a month ago that Arsenal had a chance of preventing Alex Ferguson's red-hot championship favourites from collecting their fifth title in six Premiership seasons. Wasn't there a certain Salford bookie who actually paid out to punters who had backed United?

Fortunes can change dramatically and, just as Gunners' fans have had their hopes rekindled, so too have Wanderers'.

Successive home wins against Sheffield Wednesday and Leicester City have resuscitated their survival ambitions and, if they can complete the hat-trick, even the prophets of doom will be forced to think again.

Fact is that they will have to achieve something they have never done - three successive Premiership wins - but confidence is high and Arsenal come to the Reebok with their strikeforce weakened by the loss through suspension of top scorer Dennis Bergkamp on top of Ian Wright's continued absence through injury. Wright smashed Cliff Bastin's 50-year-old Arsenal scoring record with a stunning hat-trick on that September afternoon and Bergkamp was one of the orchestrators of the trouncing after Alan Thompson had given them a 13th minute lead.

Arsenal - now only six points behind United with three games in hand - certainly won't be the same force without Bergkamp and Wright. But no-one in the Bolton camp sees that as a cause for complaceny, least of all Thompson.

"They've got a great back four and two good defensive midfield men in Petit and Vieira," he says admiringly. "Hopefully we can break them down.

"Not that they'll come here with a defensive approach. I think they'll come to win the game and although they don't have Bergkamp and Wright, they have Anelka and Wreh - and Overmars is bang on form at the moment. They'll probably think they can afford a draw but I'm sure their manager will be looking for a win.

"They'll look at our position and think they should get three points from us but we'll be thinking differently."

Todd, who believes his players have the ability as well as the determination to beat the drop says: "This is our third cup final and we are playing a team who are, in many people's minds, the potential champions. "We have stuck at it, stuck to our principles and our beliefs and we have never given up.

"We said we had to do well in these three home games in a row. We've won two and we have to get that third win.

"We know how difficult it's going to be because Arsenal have gone something like 18 games unbeaten and are not conceding goals.

"But we are in a rich vein of form as well. You can see the passion in our players and if we keep this kind of appetite and desire to make things happen we have a chance."

Wenger, who is missing the injured Lee Dixon but could have Petit and Steve Bould back after injury, has not yet decided who will replace Wright and Bergkamp.

He has never before paired Anelka and Wreh in the first-team, although they have often played together in the reserves, and could instead move Overmars up front or offer David Platt an advanced role.

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