James Lawton: Wenger shows the strain as balance tilts to Ferguson

Anxious Arsenal manager faces loss of Campbell and Vieira as fixture list favours United in Premiership clima

Sir Alex Ferguson has a potent asset now. If he was an American coach, he would say that at the most vital time of the season he has "Mo" on his team. Mo Mentum, that is. A key "clutch" player, Mo.

He is someone to batter you through the pressure that, for example, can come if your opponents are granted a goal as egregiously as were Arsenal at Highbury on Wednesday night, when if Thierry Henry had been any further offside he would have needed to hail a cab somewhere in Finsbury Park in order to rejoin the game.

Normally Fergie would have been consumed by that official misadventure. He would have raged at the moon. But then, with a vital point in his pocket and, however fine the margin, the box seat in the Premiership race, he probably felt he could leave the raging to Arsène Wenger. A sharp twist in the plot of a deeply entrenched rivalry, no doubt – and one heavy with significance. A tight title race is hard on everyone but there is no doubt about who is showing most strain.

For several weeks, as United have reeled in Arsenal from an eight-point lead, Wenger's body language has been increasingly frantic.

This week, as United revealed a vital edge in commitment, Wenger's tension, even distress, was palpable – and dangerously close to overflowing. This went somewhat beyond his usual myopia when one of his players is disciplined, as Sol Campbell was inevitably after his foul on Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Wenger's response was standard claptrap. "He cannot understand it," said Wenger. "There should be common sense in football. It was accidental." Wenger was right only about the need for common sense, both in aggrieved managers and professional observers.

Wenger's reaction was typical and went all the way back to his risible claim that if English football was not more tolerant of the excesses of Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit, they might pack their bags and go home to France. Petit did, anyway, but not for fair treatment at home but big bucks in Barcelona.

Sadly, the Sky analysts Andy Gray, Graeme Souness and Alan Shearer were just as predictable as they marched into the euphemism business. Gray, like Wenger, thought that Campbell was harshly treated, but then he is the man who told us that an appalling tackle by Paul Scholes, which laid out an opponent in an international against Sweden, was the product of "over-enthusiasm", a proposition so preposterous the player himself felt bound to issue a correction. He said he was embarrassed by the tackle and that he certainly deserved to be sent off.

Souness and Shearer thought that Campbell may have been trying to achieve balance before passing the ball down the line. Yes, sure, now what was that about the moon being made of Gruyère?

Whether Campbell delivered a full Monty of an elbow, and Solskjaer exaggerated the effect, is open to argument. What is not in doubt is that Campbell raised his arm in the direction of the Norwegian's head – so of course he had to go, and Wenger's talk of an appeal (which has been made) was nonsensical.

Ferguson's relatively subdued reaction to Henry's outrageous goal spoke volumes about the mood of the man. Apart from a result which tips the balance of what will surely be a close, perhaps even palpitating, finish, Ferguson had the certainty that his rough debating style had finally got into the bones of his only serious rival in the last decade of English football.

That there is mutual respect between Wenger and Ferguson is inevitable, but then, perhaps, so is their plain dislike of each other. Fierce rivalry rarely leads to warm companionship and this is a battle that is getting close to monumental.

Wenger's current anxiety, it is reasonable to speculate, may include a touch of self-recrimination. He backed away sharply enough from the hullabaloo that followed his purported claim that Arsenal might go undefeated through a full domestic season, but not to the extent that removed all traces of hubris from Highbury. The team performed beautifully in the early going, but the idea of a clean sweep through the league programme was something about which to dream rather than even hint.

The mere floating of the idea was enough to put Old Trafford, a morass of complacency itself last season, on red alert. Now we see the consequences for what had seemed like Arsenal's almost formal retention of their title. Apart from Mo, Fergie has a team which has outlasted Arsenal – again – in European competition and quite relentlessly wiped away their advantage in the Premiership.

Ruud van Nistelrooy has become the hard-working destroyer-talisman, Ryan Giggs is much more like himself and there were signs at Highbury that Roy Keane may be edging towards some of his old authority.

When you put it all together, there is much supporting evidence for Ferguson's belief that his main problem last season was not so much declining talent as dwindling ambition. The author of the flying boot has plainly remedied that. He has also fixed a desperate weakness at the heart of defence, where admiration for the style and the meaning of Laurent Blanc was never enough to erase the fact of his critical lack of mobility.

Much is being made of Arsenal's extra game – and greater potential to build up a favourable goals advantage when they go into the final test against hapless Sunderland – but the suspicion must be that the decision will, as almost always in even the tightest of races, be settled by points rather than goals.

It is a probability plainly not lost on Arsène Wenger. You had only to see the face of this brilliant but increasingly angst-ridden man to guess that.