Manchester United are certainly strong favourites to win this match but Steve Bruce is far too fierce a competitor to send a team out to lie down and die. He will surely harbour aspirations to manage his old club one day and there will be no better way of getting himself noticed than to prepare his team and send them out to deny United a victory in a match of this magnitude. Victory for Manchester United will certainly have to be earned.

While Manchester United have a perfect record of six victories out of six in their previous head-to-heads against Wigan, they have had to work hard for victory in their two previous visits to the JJB Stadium. Indeed, in both matches, Wigan scored the first goal and preserved their lead until half time. United did go on to win both matches as Wigan tired, although in the first of these matches, a late own goal handed United victory which they barely merited on the night.

Wigan have some strong players in their ranks and their directness makes them a difficult outfit to play against. Emile Heskey has enjoyed a decent season having been reunited with his former manager from his Birmingham days and if he shows his battering ram tendencies, it could be an uncomfortable afternoon for United supporters, particularly if Wes Brown is in opposition rather than Vidic.

But Wigan are no one man team. There has been recent talk that United are pursuing Wigan forward Nuno Valencia as a summer signing while Honduran midfielder Wilson Palacios has been one of the Premier League’s most unheralded heroes of the season. United must also be wary of the threat Austrian centre back Paul Scharner offers from set pieces and should be careful not to concede too many free kicks near to their own penalty box.There has been talk that Wigan’s biggest threat could come in the form of a twelfth man for them, namely their infamous quagmire of a pitch.

If Wigan were to follow the trend of the past two seasons and score the first goal in this fixture, then it is conceivable that they could make Manchester United’s afternoon an uncomfortable one. The visitors are the highest scorers in the league this season but as was mentioned earlier, they have found their free scoring ways harder to come by on the road of late.

As ever, they will be relying on Cristiano Ronaldo to lead the way. The Portuguese winger looks the heir apparent so far as the World Player of the Year is concerned having scored 41 goals this season, 30 of which have been in the Premier League. If United win this match and thereby seal their title, you somehow expect he will be on the score sheet and it would certainly be fitting if he was.

The main factor that tilts the scales in Manchester United’s favour is that Ferguson and his squad have been in this position and some of the older players in the squad such as Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs will recall previous failures that made the team stronger, such as their agonising failure to overhaul West Ham on the last day of the 1994/95 season, meaning Blackburn won the title despite losing at Anfield on the final day.

Down at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea will feel they have the momentum and that they have the easier part of the bargain. All they can do is win their match, they cannot control what happens in deepest Lancashire. The fact that the West Londoners have taken the title to the final day of the season, however, is a remarkable achievement given that it was only seven weeks ago that most observers imagined they were playing for third place while Manchester United and Arsenal would slug it out for the main prize.

Chelsea have not been fluent consistently this season but they are like a machine in grinding out victories. They have lost three matches over the course of the league campaign, but two of those defeats came in their first six matches of the season and since losing at the Emirates Stadium in December, they are unbeaten in league combat. The loss of Didier Drogba and John Terry for a fair part of the campaign and the loss of further players to the African Nations Cup did not help their cause, but with Drogba restored to fitness and all of Chelsea’s big hitters available again, Grant’s team have embarked on an excellent run of form at just the right time.

While Drogba remains the talisman in the way Chelsea are set up to play, some other key players have risen to prominence of late. In particular, I believe it is no coincidence that Chelsea’s form has hit a noticeably upward curve since Michael Essien returned to the side. Essien was suspended the last time Chelsea lost a Premier League match and he missed around two months of Chelsea’s campaign to suspension and African Cup of Nations duty. But since his return in February, the Ghanaian midfielder has been in commanding form, dominating the Chelsea midfielder and contributing goals along the way, including a vital winner at Everton last month.

Essien’s midfield colleague Michael Ballack has also been a major contributor in the Chelsea renaissance. Ballack had a poor first season at Stamford Bridge after signing from Bayern Munich but this season his stock has risen and he has demonstrated the big match quality he has shown so often for his country in clawing Chelsea back into the title hunt. Goalscoring midfielders are a priceless commodity for any team as Frank Lampard has demonstrated for Chelsea over the years, but as Lampard’s stock has lowered, so Ballack’s has rocketed and his double against Manchester United and vital breakthrough header against Newcastle have been significant contributions to Chelsea’s title challenge.

The one injury doubt to give Chelsea cause for concern ahead of Sunday’s crunch match is with regards to Ricardo Carvalho. Back in 2004, some questioned the value in Jose Mourinho signing his old lieutenant from Porto for £19 million when at the time he had what many considered to be the best central defensive partnership in England in the form of John Terry and William Gallas. Yet, Carvalho has justified his transfer fee ten fold in the past four seasons and with Gallas gone and Terry more injury prone than back then, Carvalho has become Chelsea’s defensive rock and this season he has been to this observer at least, Chelsea’s player of the season. Should he be absent today, that would be a real blow to the Blues although given the paucity of firepower in Bolton’s attack, unlikely to be a fatal one.

Bolton have got back to basics since Gary Megson took the reins at the Reebok Stadium last autumn. Megson’s team, like Megson himself, would not win any awards for aesthetics, but they have rediscovered the spirit and ugliness that saw them punch above their weight for several seasons under Sam Allardyce’s guidance. It is some achievement that Wanderers are, to all intents and purposes, safe going into the final match given that when Megson took over, they found themselves cast adrift at the bottom of the table. The Reebok Stadium has become a fortress for them again despite the team being short of goals with Nicolas Anelka having departed for their final day opponents in January and El Hadji Diouf only showing fleeting glimpses of his talents.

Bolton delivered a dent to Chelsea’s title hopes on this ground last season when, in Sam Allardyce’s final game in charge, they came here with an injury ravaged team and snatched an unlikely 2-2 draw. They do not have the worst of records at Stamford Bridge having also achieved the same score there in Jose Mourinho’s first season and a 2-1 victory the season prior to that. A repeat this time around though would seem extremely unlikely, however, given that Bolton have less to play for and given that it is hard to see where Bolton’s goals will come from.

Sometimes Chelsea struggle more when playing against opposition they are expected to beat and they can sometimes struggle when they are forced to take the initiative and take the match to their opponents. However, the importance of the occasion will ensure that Chelsea do not have any problems against Bolton and with Bolton likely to be short of intensity, I can only see Chelsea prevailing in this match by a minimum of two clear goals. It will all be deemed irrelevant though if Manchester United win at Wigan.