Neville inspires triumph that casts doubt on Gunners' potency

Genius has of course never excluded the possibility of more than a touch of irrationality – hence the eccentricities of Mozart, Bill Shankly and, on Saturday, Arsène Wenger.

Wenger joined the club in some style when he claimed his fiercest rival Sir Alex Ferguson had stolen victory with a combination of outrageous luck and doomsday defence. It was the statement of a football man in denial possibly unmatched since the time 30-odd years ago Shankly came growling out of the Liverpool dressing room after a defeat by Johan Cruyff's Ajax of Amsterdam. "They were the most defensive team we've ever played," Shanks snarled. Ajax had won 5-0.

The briefest of reflection says that United's 2-0 win over Arsenal was much less decisive. Indeed, if Thierry Henry had not made a mockery of claims on his behalf that he is now the world's top swordsman in front of goal, and Fabien Barthez had not got an officially unnoticed touch to a sublime lob by Robert Pires, early on Ferguson would have been staring down the barrel of the gun rather than contemplating a dazzling new dawn. It's also true, as Wenger alleged, that Ruud van Nistelrooy brought an illegal touch of the basketball court to controlling the ball with which he sent on Paul Scholes to make the cross for Juan Sebastian Veron's all-important opening goal.

But that's enough of the dialectics. United beat their nemesis in every way possible: tactically, morally, individually. Name any aspect of a winning performance and United had it. By comparison Arsenal looked hollow, which may have explained the extent of Wenger's bizarre daft-speak.

The Highbury guru's best hope is that what happened on Saturday will prove the most persuasive of reminders that United have been a sleeping power in need not so much of new personnel but a sharp bout of the old hunger. On this occasion they were ravenous to the point of irresistibility.

United, with Roy Keane, David Beckham, Rio Ferdinand and Nicky Butt approaching availability, have their own lesson to learn and it is one that Ferguson has been desperate to implant since the middle of last season. It is that without desire a team, however gifted, is ultimately lost.

No one exhibited more of the motivational good stuff than the much criticised Veron. His game remained at times irredeemably profligate but perhaps as never before he searched for relevance and, for once in a United shirt, he found quite a lot of it. Not enough, though, to cast any serious question mark against Phil Neville's rare elevation as man of the match. Such an accolade is more or less inevitable when any midfielder exerts more influence than a combination of Patrick Vieira and one of the engines of Brazil's World Cup win, Gilberto Silva, and Ferguson's sense of well-being must have been in danger of overflowing when he considered that Neville had some serious rivals for the honour, including Van Nistelrooy, Paul Scholes, Wesley Brown, Mikaël Silvestre and John O'Shea.

At the centre of defence Brown and Silvestre brought such bite and sound coverage that Ferdinand may be wise to pause, at least for a second or two, in any assumption of an automatic return to the team. For Laurent Blanc, despite Ferguson's devotion to the memory of his best days and enduring style, it surely could be the time when his Old Trafford Indian Summer finally gives way to the long winter. O'Shea's career, by comparison, is getting as hot as a jalapeno. In the centre he has shown strength and good judgement. At left-back he gave even more convincing evidence of finely tuned instinct and impressively quick, adept feet. For the moment the big young man is a gift to an injury-damaged squad, Soon enough, he will be a major figure operating on his own terms.

With Beckham in the stand and Ryan Giggs lost in the woods, United might have been critically undermined by the directness of Sylvain Wiltord on the right and the trickery of Pires on the left. But, although Pires is plainly well on the way to the kind of natural sorcery which made him player of the year, his influence faded under the weight of United self-belief. Wiltord never really got in the game, largely for the same reason.

That meant that, after all the promise of his team's first run at the new season, Wenger had come at dismaying speed to the point of full circle. Where it left him was in football's trickiest terrain: re-stocking the ambition of a team which had believed itself to be in a class of its own.

Having lost eight of their previous 13 games, and after failing to score for the first time in 56 Premiership games, Arsenal's three-point lead suddenly looks a matter for attrition rather than celebration.

Much now depends on Ferguson's ability to nurture the fire which broke out on Saturday. The effects of the misadventure of his premature retirement announcement, and the fear that without Keane United were scarcely half a team, were for 90 minutes at least utterly expunged. Van Nistelrooy led the line with magnificent panache, give or take a few moments of melodrama, and Scholes was Scholes, arguably the most consistently effective attacking player of Ferguson's entire regime.

Their force alone exposed Wenger to ridicule when he talked about United as though they had attached themselves like limpets to the idea of survival in the greatest challenge of their season. United's biggest battle has always been with their own sense of a full larder. On Saturday it was as though they finally recognised the need to put some fresh food on the table. In one way Wenger's displeasure was understandable enough. Certainly in all the circumstances he was never likely to wish Fergie and his players bon appetite.