SELF PITY CITY

We had none of that at Old Trafford on Sunday; no grace, no manly shrugs of the shoulders that would have represented acceptance of the old truth that defeat is the impostor always waiting in ambush for the greatest of teams. What we had was a gorging banquet of self-pity.

It was the old Wenger casting the first stone, talking about cheating as though his own Robert Pires had not defined the dark art last season when he so disgracefully connived a penalty against Portsmouth, an outrage which preserved an unbeaten record that would eventually be so celebrated by every genuine football lover in the land. Who forgets that at the time Pires's offence provoked from Wenger not a murmur of displeasure, still less shame?

Campbell was, of course, outraged to the point of later rejecting the proffered handshake of his young England team-mate; he was no less indignant, indeed, than when he insisted that he had not elbowed United's Ole Gunnar Solskjaer 18 months ago.

No matter that the television evidence was emphatic, Campbell insisted that not only was he was innocent, he was victim of an FA conspiracy. There was some reason to hope that such paranoia had been put on one side after last season's rancid behaviour at Old Trafford, when Wenger and his players were finally obliged, by their own boardroom, to face up to the consequences of their lack of discipline. FA punishment, as Sir Alex Ferguson raged, was mild indeed, but it did come after the Highbury board had gone public with its belief that a line had to be drawn.

There is no doubt Arsenal had grievances at Old Trafford. But enough to justify the on-field squabbling, the pointed fingers, the overweening reproach and a suggestion that Ferguson had soup thrown over his shirt by an Arsenal player? Given their own failings, you wouldn't have thought so.

Patrick Vieira was aghast when he was booked. It was no doubt an affront to his attempts to referee the game, but it was surely consistent with some of the savagery of his own tackling.

The truth was that Arsenal came for a draw, which, given the level of some of their previous performances this season, admittedly against lesser opposition, was something of a failure of nerve. Maybe it was this that most gnawed at Arsenal in the bitter aftermath of their lost record. There was too the additional aggravation that since their emergence as England's unbeatable team and, in the belief of some dubious historians, the greatest club side in the history of the national game, their League and Cup record against their most bitter rivals was the desperate one of played four, won none, drawn two, lost two.