Arriving on Merseyside yesterday, Arsenal's team bus may have passed a sign bearing the local council's promise: Anfield regeneration. If the next stage of this mammoth project is to take place at the expense of Arsène Wenger, however, the manager was blissfully unaware of the possibility.

In Wenger's world, Arsenal are on course for the greatest season in their history. He tipped them to win away to Liverpool tonight, against Manchester United at Old Trafford on Sunday, to lift the Barclays Premier League title and the Champions League. While the rest of the world sees a young team labouring through exhaustion down the final straight, Wenger contemplates only champions and thoroughbreds, travelling on the shoulder of the leaders, completely in charge of the race.

If the words uttered in the Anfield trophy room caused raised eyebrows yesterday, Wenger exuded benign indulgence in the face of doubt. “I take by your question that you do not believe as I do,” he told a reporter who accused him, albeit politely, of whistling to keep his spirits up.

It is fair to say that nobody does. There are men now, dressed head to toe in red-and-white Arsenal regalia, preparing to embark on a six-hour coach journey up the M6 and arriving back home with the milkman, who are not as bullish as the Arsenal manager. Wenger yesterday carried the delusional air of Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, otherwise known as Comical Ali, the Iraqi propaganda minister who had the Allies on the cusp of bloody defeat as tanks rolled into Baghdad.

His season totters on the brink of endgame, six points adrift of Manchester United in the league and next to visit Old Trafford, now requiring a win, a high-scoring draw or a 1-1 draw and a victory on penalties at Anfield to progress in the Champions League, yet he was perched yesterday like the man in the box seat. And if he is to be indulged, even for one day only, it is for this reason: Arsenal are a better team than Liverpool. In that sentiment, he is right.

Catching United? Forget it. The leaders have already drawn at the Emirates Stadium and won 4-0 in an FA Cup tie at Old Trafford. Getting a result against Liverpool at Anfield? Tough, certainly, but not impossible. It is this thought that Wenger must nurture, the memory that Liverpool have not beaten Arsenal in three meetings this season, and while Arsenal, in turn, have not beaten Liverpool, a sequence of three 1-1 draws means it is still anybody's game. And, in the first leg, Arsenal were marginally the better side.

Those who favour Liverpool do so because of the fearsome reputation of the manager, Rafael Benítez, who is a past master at getting his team past superior opposition. In the previous round, Inter Milan, the Serie A leaders, were defeated; on previous occasions, Chelsea, AC Milan, Juventus and Barcelona have bitten the dust. Liverpool may trail Arsenal by eight points in the league, but the clever money says that data means nothing when applied to Liverpool's potential in Europe. Wenger, unsurprisingly, begs to differ.

“It will not always go for them,” he said. “You cannot say it will always work as it has before. I am a great believer that the performance on the day makes the decision. What is important is that we play with heart and belief, in the way we know we can play.”

In other words, Wenger is pinning his season on the most precarious belief system: that of the best team winning. After a weekend in which Portsmouth, Cardiff City, West Bromwich Albion and Barnsley contested the FA Cup semi-finals, good luck with that.

Arsenal's problem under Wenger has long been the same. Unlike Liverpool, and Chelsea, the teams that are fancied to contest the Champions League semi-final in their place, they cannot win ugly. Arsenal's aim is to outplay the opposition, to beat them at football, at the most beautiful elements of the game, and if they cannot do that, they are destined to fail. When Wenger spoke of Liverpool's strengths at Anfield, he mentioned stamina.

Arsenal's qualities are more ethereal. Wenger needs it to be his night, he needs his team to fulfil potential that has rarely been realised in recent weeks, during a run of two victories in 11 games. Most of all, he needs them to be clinical in front of goal, a failing he claimed was responsible for recent touchline agonies that have drawn comparisons to Basil Fawlty.

“At times in the season, I have been nervous and angry,” Wenger said. “Recently, I have become physically agitated because I was so desperate for us to score goals. I was trying to score for us when we were missing. We have had a dip, that is true, but it is possible for us to turn it around now.”

There was certainty in his voice; a certainty that has not been present in his team for some time. As he prays for regeneration at Anfield, that absence must be his deepest fear.