THESE GAMES WERE UTTERLY FEROCIOUS

SORRY Cesc, I wasn’t at Old Trafford when you flung the pizza at Sir Alex Ferguson... but I wish I had been! Often memories of these titanic clashes merge into one. Maybe he assumed that because there was a melee I must have been there, but I had already left Arsenal for Leicester. There was always an added emphasis when we played Manchester United. We knew if we took three points off them, we would have an excellent season. These were two teams at the peak of their powers. United won the Treble in 1999 but that year, head-to-head, I felt we were as good if not better. Where they had the edge was their ability to comprehensively beat everyone else. Such was their hold over the rest of the Premier League that to beat them, you had to play them at their own game. United’s players also had a habit of crowding the referee and I wanted to make sure we matched their numbers. In these games, you could not afford to get embroiled in personal vendettas. If you gave any one player special attention, then someone like Ryan Giggs would be there to exploit the space you had vacated. Of course, with such strong-willed individuals on both sides it was inevitable that tempers would flare. In the 801 games I played for club and country I only saw punches thrown in the tunnel on two or three occasions — and one of them was during a game between Arsenal and United. But when I look back on that rivalry, there was always a level of respect between the two sides. United beat us in the FA Cup semi-final in 2004, six months after I had clashed with Ruud van Nistelrooy at Old Trafford. I saw him in the tunnel before the game and told him the incident had not been personal. I had simply been caught up in the heat of battle between two great adversaries.