Premiership: O'Leary facing striking dilemma

David O’Leary faces one of the toughest decisions of his short managerial career as he leads Leeds United back to his old hunting ground of Highbury tomorrow night.

The former Arsenal defender will leave one of his three star strikers a disappointed man but as United set off by train to London today, which one starts on the bench is anybody’s guess.

Alan Smith crashed into the reckoning on Saturday after replacing £15m Irish international Robbie Keane in the 65th minute of his side’s 2-0 victory over Southampton.

Until Smith was introduced to the fray Leeds were struggling, but the young striker turned the game on its head with his surging runs and a stunning goal.

Smith admitted afterwards: "It would be nice to start against Arsenal, which is a massive game for us. I was so upset when I found out I wasn’t starting - it was much worse than when I was waiting to get on for England last week."

Keane could be the man to make way after a largely ineffective showing against the Saints, as Leeds prepare to resume hostilities with the Gunners after their stormy May meeting.

But they may not come face to face with Martin Keown, who is still appealing against a suspension for two off-the-ball incidents which ignited Highbury that afternoon.

Keown is expected to sit out the game but Leeds goalkeeper Nigel Martyn believes last year’s fireworks have been forgotten and each side will only have the three points on their mind.

"There was a bit of banter when I was with England last week about the how the tackling’s going, but that’s all it is," Martyn said.

"It is just two teams who are desperate to win and they’ll go as far as they can to achieve it."

It is a measure of how far Leeds have come during O’Leary’s tenure that they are going south aiming for nothing less than victory.

Martyn added: "We believe we can win every game and we’re going to start out to do that but it depends how the game turns out.

"We didn’t play as well as we could have done on Saturday but we kept plugging away and got the result.

"Arsenal will attack us and they’ve got a great defence, but we’ve also got to make sure we defend well and exploit their weaknesses."

Lucas Radebe, who is still struggling back to full fitness due to his problematic knee, and long-term casualty Michael Bridges, are Leeds’ only two definite absentees.

But Martyn’s goalkeeping deputy Paul Robinson could also miss out with a heel injury and Australian youngster Danny Milosevic is on standby.