Kolo Toure is out with the foot injury that saw him limp off after 20 minutes of the midweek game at Everton, but x-rays have revealed nothing worse than bruising. Wenger says his absence will be a matter of days rather than weeks. Lauren will be favourite to step in.

With Toure unavailable, Cygan is likely to play alongside Campbell. To be honest, I'm not sure that Toure and Keown aren't our best 2 centre-backs at the moment. Cygan may be a bit immobile and poor in the air (oh, and his distribution can be awful for spells), but in fairness to him, the goal at Everton was as much down to Campbell not moving into the space behind him when Pascal went to challenge Ferguson for the header.

Bergkamp and Wiltord are both out still. Kanu's been doing well in this spell, scoring a nice goal at Goodison, and could well retain his place alongside Henry. Midfield is the usual "perm any 3 from 5" (plus Vieira).

Boro start the 4-game series with a few significant absentees in Michael Ricketts (knee injury), Gaizka Mendieta (virus) and Jonathan Greening (back). Mark Schwarzer missed their last game at Fulham also with a back injury but Australian stopper Brad Jones stepped in for his debut and was apparently quite impressive. Schwarzer was reported as 50-50 this morning.