Somehow, Darren Fletcher against Cesc Fabregas does not quite set the pulses racing in the same way. It is difficult, too, to imagine Cristiano Ronaldo and Gilberto Silva getting to grips with one another in the tunnel at Highbury tonight. The rivalry between Manchester United and Arsenal may still be intense but, without Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira, it no longer feels quite so sinister. The potential for bloodshed is no longer so extreme.

Tonight will be the first time since a scoreless draw at Highbury in November 1994 that the two teams have met in the Premiership without either Keane or Vieira.The logical assumption is the match will be missing some of the usual nastiness but Alex Ferguson is not so sure. "We're certainly talking about two significant personalities but they weren't there in 1990," he said of Keane and Vieira yesterday, a reference to the infamous Old Trafford brawl.

That melee was sparked not by a firebrand such as Steve Bould or Bryan Robson but by a squabble between two comparative lightweights, Anders Limpar and Denis Irwin.

This is a match that can do strange things to the most mild-mannered people. It was Fabregas, allegedly, who hurled the pea soup over Ferguson's suit at the end of last season's match at Old Trafford, the so-called Battle of the Buffet when, according to the United manager, the grey-suited Wenger "came sprinting towards me with his hands raised, shouting: 'What do you want to do about it?'"

Equally the last player to disgrace himself in this fixture was not Keane or Vieira but Mikael Silvestre, United's usually placid centre-half, in the corresponding fixture at Highbury last season. Silvestre's red card for thrusting his forehead into Freddie Ljungberg's face epitomised how this fixture can make even the most easy-going player lose the plot.

Nevertheless, the departure of two of the chief protagonists just might contribute to a thawing in the hostilities between two clubs that, in light of Chelsea's emergence, have no reason to regard one another as the main challengers for silverware.

Van Nistelrooy, an even more unpopular figure at Highbury than Keane, said at the weekend that "the edge had gone a bit" from the fixture, although Wenger made it clear last night that he expected another bruising encounter.

"You still expect an intense game. Maybe sometimes Keane and Vieira made it a little bit more physical because of their stature but it's a top-level game," said the Arsenal manager. "Because of the physical qualities of the players, because of the speed of the game, you always expect it to be a little bit spectacular."