Arsene and Fergie usurped by Mourinho

On the surface, nothing seemed to have changed. All those solemn warnings from top cops to FA suits about the need for an outbreak of civility and dignity between English football's answer to the Montagues and Capulets naturally went quite unheeded in a game studded by beauty but infected rather more by beastliness.

Yet something was different. Through all the whingeing, the hostility, the diving, the cheating, the odd head butt, the hounding of the ref and the "see you outside" pleasantries before the wretched thing had even started, it was possible to feel for the first time in years a genuine pointlessness in all this United-Arsenal poison.

For as long as they had ruled the roost and we felt we were watching a twiceyearly duel for absolute supremacy in the domestic game, we could just about convince ourselves the sound of flying pizzas and the fury of red-faced managers barely able to look at each other while peremptorily shaking hands actually did signify something.

Now though, with Chelsea so obviously outstripping the pair of them, last night's affair felt quite peculiar. It was as if two wounded old stags were still locking antlers with barmy ferocity in their own private war quite oblivious to how the preening young buck down by the bridge had already usurped the rutting rights.

Routinely, this fixture is now played with such crazed intensity that Jose Mourinho must have watched it all on the box with a smug smile. Because the fare on offer at Highbury, for all its blood and thunder and unarguable entertainment value, only illustrated why his Chelsea lead the way.

For the Blues' pre-eminence is based on control and discipline as much as talent. If you take the splendid Dennis Bergkamp and Paul Scholes out of the equation, such qualities were rarely in evidence at all last night. It's all very well talking about getting wound up for a game but when your captains have kicked it off in the tunnel, what chance of any real cool-headedness and focus out there?

Arsenal never do themselves any favours by abandoning a clinical, cerebral approach in favour of an all-out scrap. Even the old warrior Tony Adams ended up proffering Wenger the advice on telly: "Play football, forget the fighting."

The game was just 20 seconds old when Gabriel Heinze flew in, Freddie Ljungberg did a dying swan impression and Graham Poll got hounded by a posse of snarling players. Pitiful. No wonder amid the subsequent breakneck dramas, absentmindedness occasionally struck, like United's failure to marshall Patrick Vieira for Arsenal's opener and then Sol Campbell's careless blocked clearance which set up the visitors' equaliser.