The Greatest Rivalry by Dominic Hougham – Review
By Karl Hornsey
As author Dominic Hougham states at the start of his latest release, rivalries are key to sporting intrigue. Whether that’s boxers fighting each other in an epic trilogy, the likes of England and Australia battling for the Ashes, or those times when two great players or teams simply elevate each other to new heights, those rivals end up needing each other. And here, Hougham focuses on one of the greatest rivalries ever to be found in British football – that featuring Arsenal and Manchester United across nine remarkable seasons from the mid-1990s.
It no doubt helped that the players, fans and managers seemed to have a genuine dislike for each other during this period, with neither Arsene Wenger nor Sir Alex Ferguson ever backing down, though their subsequent respect for each other and friendship shows just how much they were simply caught up in the time. Hougham starts with the period before Wenger’s surprise appointment at Arsenal, when United were already the dominant force in English football, and expertly relates how Wenger, and the subsequent influx of overseas players, changed the domestic game. In fact, many things changed over this decade, especially the influence of money and TV companies on the sport, and the author interweaves these issues throughout his chronological reporting to great effect.
“Classic clashes”
There’s so much material for Hougham to mine here, in an era when more and more fixtures were being televised and digital records kept and maintained, and he brings that time back to life. As a fan of one of the clubs myself, this evoked so many incredible memories for me, and it was genuinely one of the most remarkable periods I can ever remember, and certainly unsurpassed since. I too can vouch for the intensity of the rivalry and, without being one of those people to hark back to bygone times, there simply doesn’t seem to have been anything to match it since.
Hougham explains early on that, as he isn’t a journalist, he hasn’t enjoyed the same sort of access to those involved, and that’s a shame, relying instead on interviews from the time, but his attention to detail is outstanding, chronicling the key events of each season and how both clubs improved because of each other.
This led to classic clashes on the field, and the fact that two major incidents are the ‘Battle of the Buffet’ and the ‘Battle of Old Trafford’, gives some indication of how the temperature rose and rose. However, as with all good things, they come to an end. And, in this case, that end was precipitated by the arrival of Roman Abramovich’s riches to Chelsea, which saw them become not only rivals to the two clubs, but to surpass them. The longevity of the managers is unlikely to be repeated and lengthy rivalries are much harder to establish now, making this a great account of a time that, quite simply, might never come along again.
‘The Greatest Rivalry: Arsenal, Manchester United and the Battle that Defined an Era’ by Dominic Hougham is published by Pitch Publishing
