"[Wenger] came sprinting towards me with his hands raised saying, 'What do you want to do about it?'" Sir Alex Ferguson recalled in 2005, a year on from arguably the Premier League's most infamous game of football. "He was standing right there. He was criticising my players, calling them cheats, so I told him to leave them alone and behave himself."
If it is drama you are after, then it is difficult to pick out a more feisty and memorable encounter than Manchester United's 2-0 victory over great rivals Arsenal, which came on this day 11 years ago at Old Trafford. While this encounter has always provided many sub-plots pre-match - Ferguson vs. Arsene Wenger being just one of them - this particular match had even more riding on it.
The Gunners had just clocked 49 games without defeat, taking them into uncharted territory in the Premier League era as one of the greatest sides in a generation. Thirteen months on from the Battle of Old Trafford, in which Ruud van Nistelrooy missed a controversial late penalty to edge Arsenal a step closer to the title, it was time for another dramatic showdown.
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Forget the Battle of Old Trafford, this was to be known as the Battle of the Buffet due to events that unravelled in the tunnel area post-match. On the field, during the 90 minutes of ferocious action, Van Nistelrooy redeemed himself somewhat by finding the net, while Wayne Rooney also scored his first league goal for the Red Devils.
Events had been boiling over long before the full-time whistle had sounded, though, as Van Nistelrooy somehow escaped a red card when stamping on Ashley Cole, with his subsequent retrospective three-game ban doing little to appease frustrated Arsenal supporters. The penalty tucked away by Rooney to seal things came about in a contentious manner, too, with minimal - if any - contact made by Sol Campbell inside the box.
If that was not enough to start the football equivalent of World War III, then the Gunners' premature "50 not out" Nike-branded shirts underneath their playing kits further added to the occasion. Exactly what happened in the tunnel area, beyond the sight of any of the cameras stationed inside Old Trafford, is not known to this day more than a decade on.
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It is claimed that Cesc Fabregas was the key perpetrator, lobbing a pizza in the direction of Ferguson which led to the fiery Scotsman sporting a tracksuit in his TV interview shortly after the game had finished. The United boss was keen to focus on his side's display, and their achievement of becoming the first side in 50 attempts to get the better of their stubborn opponents.
Records of this kind are there to be broken, of course, but for Arsenal supporters it could not have happened at a worse place - White Hart Lane excluded. This was the home of their biggest rivals at the time, the side they had a long-running battle with for silverware on the domestic stage and the team they simply hated losing against.
Furthermore, Arsenal's form suffered as a result as they slipped from their position atop the league table and eventually found themselves five points adrift of Chelsea come Christmas time. United could not push on, however, finishing behind both Chelsea and Arsenal in third place, but they did have the satisfaction of ending the Londoners' impressive - and surely unbeatable - 49-game run without defeat.
It was a streak that began with a 6-1 triumph over Southampton at Highbury on May 7, 2003 and took in famous results along the way, including the 2-0 win against Leicester City at the end of the following season to ensure that Arsenal would do the unthinkable and go a whole league campaign without tasting a single defeat.
No side had achieved that feat since Preston North End did likewise in the late 1800s, but Wenger's charges were not content with simply going one season unbeaten - they had more records in their sights. A mammoth half-century was just about out of reach, however, due to that infamous loss at Old Trafford which finally put an end to the Invincibles' historic run.
Manchester United: Carroll; G. Neville, Ferdinand, Silvestre, Heinze; Ronaldo (Smith-85), P. Neville, Scholes, Giggs; Rooney, Van Nistelrooy (Saha-90)
Arsenal: Lehmann; Lauren, Campbell, Toure, Cole; Ljungberg, Vieira, Edu, Reyes (Pires-70); Bergkamp, Henry
Daniel Lewis
