incident at Highbury.
The best teams in the country have always chased after
referees over unfavourable decisions and resorted to high
rhetoric before big games, but I have never seen anything
quite like the rift that has opened up between Manchester
United and Arsenal. The title race is in danger of being
spoiled by the bitterness of their rivalry.
Every time Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger lay into the
other's players, they are raising the stakes in a contest
that already has a huge amount riding upon it. The tension
can hardly get any higher and when it reaches that kind of
level there is no way it can fail to affect the players on
the pitch and the fans in the stands.
For the players it will be impossible to ignore and the
managers must take some responsibility. You can be sure that
there is no chance that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is going to
come out publicly and admit that Sol Campbell's elbow was
not a sending-off offence after collapsing on the pitch
holding his nose.
On television, it did not even look like Solskjaer was
struck in the face. Nevertheless, it was ludicrous for
Wenger to suggest that he should make a public statement.
Equally, Ferguson shaking hands on the pitch with the
linesman who flagged Campbell's sending-off meant that
neither camp covered themselves in glory.
The exchanges between these two clubs since their match on
Wednesday have been unprecedented. At Liverpool we had a bit
of a problem with Nottingham Forest between 1978 and 1981,
when we just could not beat them and they won the European
Cup twice. We eventually broke the jinx and then found that
despite all our championships during the 1980s we could
never beat Manchester United on a regular basis.
Their manager at the time, Ron Atkinson, was quite vocal on
that topic but it never got close to reaching the levels of
last week's exchanges. It will do the Premier League a great
favour in marketing their product, but if it escalates any
further the clubs will have to stop it. That's the purist in
me talking, but the part of me that played professional
football for more than 20 years says we are a long way from
compromise.