The Premier League has witnessed some iconic tussles on the pitch, but perhaps its greatest-ever rivalry took place on its sidelines when Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson were at the peak of their powers.
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After the Premier League's inception, the Red Devils dominated the English top flight. Their Scottish manager had ended their 26-year wait for a league title and went on to win four of the first five since the league's establishment. They were likely to have won the 1994/95 title as well had Eric Cantona not kicked a Crystal Palace fan, but for the most part, there didn't seem to be many managers who could rival what Ferguson was doing.
That was until Wenger's arrival at Arsenal. An unknown entity when he joined English football, the Frenchman became the fourth non-British manager to lead a team in the Premier League, with the Gunners' chairman at time, David Dein, claiming that he had realised the international route football was taking. While people may have not known who Wenger was when he arrived at Highbury, including his own players, that would soon change very quickly as his first full season in charge of the north Londoners, in the 1997/98 campaign, he would win the championship.
Ferguson acknowledged that he now had a genuine rival. He reflected on it in his self-titled autobiography, stating: "At the end of the 1990s, and for the first part of the new millennium, Arsenal were our challengers. There was no one else on the horizon. Liverpool and Newcastle had brief spells of prominence. Blackburn had their title-winning year. But if you look at our history prior to Jose Mourinho's arrival at Chelsea, there was no consistent threat to our dominance outside of Arsenal."
While the contest would've been good for the Glasgow native and his side's competitiveness, he did not like being challenged. Some of his players at the time could sense the change in his demeanour that came about following Wenger's arrival.
In a documentary called Fever Pitch, Danish goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel said: "Arsene Wenger brought something different and I think Sir Alex felt threatened."
Gary Neville used an analogy that underscored their battles when he said: "Sir Alex was a really sociable manager. So, before every single match that we played away, he would go and sit and have a coffee with the manager in his office, apart from Arsenal away at Highbury."
The Strasbourg native came and revolutionised the football culture within the country with the dietary and training regiments he implemented, as well as the foreign talent he brought in, and perhaps Ferguson viewed this as Wenger thinking he was above the British. Whatever the case may have been, the animosity between the managers was transmitted to the players and it made for enthralling football matches between the two sides for about seven years.
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It would be heated in press conferences as well as on the pitch as the two sides vied for the EPL title between 1997 and 2004.
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