In September, 2003, Arsenal played Manchester United at Old Trafford in a game that was a meeting between the two dominant teams of the era. Since Arsene Wenger’s arrival in England in 1996, Arsenal had become Manchester United’s most relentless challengers, a challenge maintained through Arsene Wenger’s invention, his perception in the transfer market and a refusal to take a backward step. To arrive in English football in the mid 1990s was to enter a world inhabited by an apex predator, Alex Ferguson, and a team which, even as it evolved, retained a willingness to conform to the image he…

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